Focus on four specific areas
The strategy is centred around four focus areas that make it even more attractive for clients to choose Danske Bank Asset Management.

1. Enhance cooperation on retail sales and advisory
In the future, Danske Bank Asset Management will be working even closer together with Personal Customers at Danske Bank on the development of new products, investment tools, training as well as the addition of resources and enhanced cooperation in the adviser network. In 2023, the amount of passive cash credit balances in Danes’ bank accounts reached a record high. The investment area thus holds vast growth potential in relation to retail clients that can be realised by boosting proactive advisory services and communications in the investment area. 

2. Strengthen relations with institutional clients
Danske Bank Asset Management will further strengthen its product offering for the institutional segment. This will be achieved by continuing to translate clients’ needs into new specific products and solutions. Danske Bank Asset Management has been doing this in recent years by introducing a number of products that have stood out internationally, and Danske Bank Asset Management has also in recent years produced convincing results as regards portfolio solutions and alternative investments, etc. Moreover, the organisation must be better at integrating the extensive expertise at asset management into the advisory services for institutional clients. 

3. Leverage strategic partnerships
Danske Bank aims to make it easier and more attractive for external distributors to offer the products from Asset Management – for example through a better operational setup and more flexible processes for onboarding new clients. In its asset management franchise, the bank must also to a larger extent supplement own strengths with those of strategic partners in order to continue offering a wide range of attractive products at an international level.

4. Simplify the value chain
Danske Bank will simplify and optimise a long series of processes and structures – in both asset management where we are identifying the benefits of new cloud-based software solutions and in portfolio management where the bank currently has fund management companies in Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway and Finland. Simplification of the value chain is a prerequisite for Danske Bank Asset Management’s full success with the other focus areas of the growth strategy.

A number of specific initiatives are linked to each of the four overall focus areas above, and these will be implemented gradually in the coming years. Already today, Danske Bank Asset Management is publishing the names of the two new strategic partners.

Future focus in our asset management
To deliver top-of-the-range investment products, we are already in the process of adjusting which investment strategies are managed in-house at Danske Bank Asset Management.

“In future, our asset management will focus even more on the areas in which we are among the best and can create most value for our clients. This is where we see the greatest potential for growth – this applies, for instance, to our portfolio solutions and alternative investments, such as hedge funds, private equity, private credit and infrastructure, active management in Nordic equities and fixed income as well as other selected flagship strategies,” says Thomas Otbo, CIO in Danske Bank Asset Management.

In regard to a number of our other equity and fixed income strategies, we have just partnered with two of the largest and most competent asset managers in the world – Goldman Sachs Asset Management and BlackRock – on the management of these strategies.

“This means that some strategies will no longer be managed in-house at Danske Bank Asset Management, as we believe that the partnering will allow us to create more value for our clients and contribute to achieving our growth ambitions. We expect the cooperations to give us even stronger products – also when it comes to our portfolio solutions of which the strategies are key components,” says Thomas Otbo.