Sanlam Investments has repositioned itself to cash in on the boom in alternative assets, private equity and SME debt in a bid to rewrite the asset management playbook.
To this end, the asset manager, owned by financial services major Sanlam, has set its growth blueprint on the following pillars: indexation, private wealth and alternative investments.
The company’s businesses — Satrix, Sanlam Investments Multi-Manager, Sanlam Private Wealth and Sanlam Alternative Investments — are expected to play a key role as the asset manager enters its next growth phase after the sale of its active asset management businesses in South Africa and the UK to Ninety One.
That deal saw Sanlam Investments transfer about R400bn worth of assets to Ninety One — with the Sanlam group taking a 12.5% stake in Ninety One, which marshals about R4-trillion in assets.
Carl Roothman, CEO of Sanlam Investments, said the money manager is rewriting the asset management playbook, with its model geared toward putting forth tailored solutions for high-net-worth, retail and institutional clients.
Roothman, who leads the R1.1-trillion asset manager, said the company is moving from an era of passive allocation to one of purposeful deployment.
“What was once a business of allocating capital across public markets is now one of designing outcomes in a world defined by persistent uncertainty. In these conditions, the urge to react is strong, but frequent repositioning for short-term certainty rarely delivers long-term value,” Roothman said.
“In the new era of investing, traditional unit trusts are losing ground to more flexible, cost-effective instruments such as exchange-traded funds and exchange-traded notes — solutions that offer clients greater choice, broader exposure, and enhanced flexibility.”
“At the same time, alternative assets — across private equity, SME debt, infrastructure, and property — have moved to the centre of portfolio construction. Alternatives are forecast to represent approximately 25% of global assets under management and over 50% of global revenue within the next decade.”
The outfit already has a dominant position in the indexation space, with it holding more than 30% market share of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in South Africa via Satrix, which has R320bn in assets.
Sanlam Investment’s alternatives franchise manages about R200bn in assets, while the private wealth business manages more than R25bn in assets — making it South Africa’s second-largest wealth manager.
Sanlam Investments Multi-Manager, which includes household names such as Graviton, Amplify Investment Partners and Glacier Invest, has amassed R520bn in assets, enjoying a 27% market share.
Nearly R60bn of the assets managed by Sanlam Investments Multi-Manager have been allocated to black-owned asset managers.
“We have also developed new capabilities, including establishing two leading discretionary fund managers, Glacier Invest and Graviton. Through the Sanfin demerger, we launched a scaled alternatives fund platform focused on private market strategies across Africa and select emerging markets, complementing our existing private equity and SME debt offerings,” Roothman said.
“As client needs evolve, markets shift and global forces reshape the landscape, the focus is moving decisively towards solutions‑led investing. Sanlam Investments enters this new era with confidence and with a reimagined, future‑fit investment platform designed to deliver solutions that combine scale, innovation and impact across the evolving investment spectrum.”
Sanlam Structured Solutions (SSS), a division of Sanlam Investments, has had a stellar start to the year, having been awarded R16.2bn third-party mandates on institutional portfolios. St John Bunkell, the executive head of portfolio management at SSS, said the strong start was enabled by its dynamic portable alpha strategy.
“We manage more than R80bn in portable alpha strategies. Our task is to deliver well-balanced and optimally structured solutions for clients.
“At the heart of these mandates is our portable alpha capability, which allows investors to separate beta (market exposure) from alpha (skill-based return), enabling more efficient portfolio construction.”