Nils Bolmstrand is intent on finding ways to help retail investors survive the global economic slump with their savings intact. The recently appointed CEO of Southampton, U.K.–based Skandia Investment Group, a global fund company with £53 billion ($87 billion) in assets under management in proprietary and open-architecture funds, wants the firm to tailor products more closely to individual investors’ needs.
The 37-year-old, a Swedish native, says that too often the fund management industry simply repackages institutional products for retail investors without taking into account clients’ appetite for — or aversion to — risk. Bolmstrand, who took over SIG in September from former CEO Jamie Macleod, hopes to provide new solutions, such as developing multiasset, multimanager funds with clear volatility parameters to better match investors’ expectations. “We ought to be able to make people’s lives easier,” Bolmstrand says. Clients will be counting on it.
