How to punch above your weight as a boutique asset manager with an innovation-driven approach to growth.

JOURNAL

READ THIS ARTICLE AND LEARN ABOUT:

• How Unigestion stays competitive in these

disruptive times

• Dealing with the pressure on fees and from

regulatory demands

• Inspiring innovative to drive growth

• The importance of ensuring team-wide

alignment for an improved client experience

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWEE:

Régis Martin joined Unigestion in 1994, and has

been CFO since 1999. He is a member of several

Unigestion Group companies and investment

funds Boards of Directors. Régis supervises the

teams included in Unigestion’s Service Platform

(IT & Logistics, Finance, Legal, Risk Management,

Operations, Organisation & Project, Human

Resources).

Régis Martin, Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, Unigestion

At Unigestion, our single-minded focus is to offer robust, tailor-made investment solutions to a limited number

of sophisticated institutions and families. We have EUR 17.2bn of assets under management, 94% is managed on

behalf of more than 270 institutional investors and 6% on behalf of a few high-net-worth families. The stability

of this client base allows for long-term vision.

Unigestion is headquartered in Geneva and has offices in major financial centres around the world. This inter-

national presence ensures both comprehensive local market research and a good understanding of the local

dynamics which govern our clients’ activities and requirements.

www.unigestion.com

ABOUT UNIGESTION

INNOVATING FOR GROWTHJUNE 16, 2016

Journal | Innovation for Growth 2

Journal: You’ve been with Unigestion since 1994. Can

you walk us through your professional journey in the

organization.

Régis Martin: I originally joined the company as an

assistant to the CFO, taking over from him in 1999

when he launched our investment management

department focused on private equity. In the early

2000s I took over the legal department and began

establishing our compliance and risk management

teams.

Back then, we were barely breaking even. We’d just

sold our private banking entity and had essentially

started our institutional investment management

business from scratch. We were still relatively small,

with around 30 employees, but gradually we won new

clients and grew from there. We went from almost

EUR 0 AUM to nearly EUR 17 billion AUM today, with

200 employees.

In 2011, I was appointed Deputy CEO, taking over

supervision of our service platform teams, which

includes, to name a few, IT & Logistics, Finance, Legal,

Risk Management, and Operations.

Journal: Tell us a bit about Unigestion – your industry

and how business has transformed in the past 8 years

since the Global Financial Crisis? Have the key com-

petitive differentiators changed?

Régis Martin: We operate in the institutional buy-side

industry, servicing pension funds, insurers, corporates

and sovereign wealth funds.

What is unique about this industry is that there is a

thorough due diligence process from the clients (on

top of the heavy regulatory requirements). This means

that there is a comprehensive process to win new

business, but also when servicing our clients.

What we’ve noticed in the past eight years in particu-

lar has been a growing and continuous pressure on

fees. Even as AUM in the industry continues to grow,

we have put a lot of energy into being able to adapt

to this growing demand and volume. As a result, we

had to diversify into new asset classes (from hedge

and private equity funds of funds to direct equities

and liquid alternative investments) and to optimize

our production costs.

Journal: In your role as Deputy CEO, you supervise

teams in Unigestion’s Service Platform, which includes,

IT & Logistics, Finance, Legal, Risk Management,

Operations. What are your biggest challenges in this

role and how do you ensure that the teams work

together and share knowledge?

Régis Martin: Information sharing is by far my biggest

challenge, and I spend a lot of time ensuring that all

the various teams are properly informed so that we

can execute efficiently and effectively. This is extreme-

ly important, especially when we onboard new clients.

Our teams across IT, compliance, operations and legal

must work hand in hand to set the new account up, to

do it properly. Each team must deliver in sequence in

order to meet the timeframe promised to our clients.

As with any organization, it is often a challenge to

have everyone on the same page at the same time. To

overcome this, I meet my direct reports weekly or

bi-monthly to ensure alignment across teams and

share information with each other so that we can fine

tune and find solutions over any blocking points.

Journal: Unigestion has EUR 17 billion AUM – how do

you stay competitive as a boutique asset manager?

What role does time-to-market for new products,

asset classes and client relations play?

Régis Martin: As a boutique asset manager, our

clients and prospects expect the same standard from

us as from the large players. We are in competition

with the large players, so we need to not only be able

to offer the same level of services, but also go the

extra mile in order to stand out from the crowd.

The challenge is, how do we offer all the services that

the large players can give? We are a niche player and

we try to give more in terms of performance and

service, as well as offering tailor made solutions.

What we’ve noticed in the past eight years in particular has been a growing and continuous pressure on fees. Even as AUM in the industry continues to grow, we have put a lot of energy into being able to adapt to this grow-ing demand and volume. RÉGIS MARTIN, DEPUTY CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER AND CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, UNIGESTION

Journal | Innovation for Growth 3

In an effort to command higher fees than the big

players, we have to bring additional value.

Being able to deliver these higher levels requires that

we can cope with them in the back end. This is really

important and requires that you standardize and

automate your internal processes. Sadly, it’s stuff that

clients do not see, but it is vital. Otherwise we’d

struggle. This is where IT plays an important role. We

needed scalability to be able to support new clients,

to manage more and more sophisticated financial

instruments, and increased AUM.

Journal: There is a lot of focus on growth in the

industry today, even though the industry still faces

pressure on fees, an ever-increasing amount of

regulation, and an ongoing struggle with data and

manual processes. How does Unigestion manage to

focus on growth, while at the same time, overcoming

these challenges?

Régis Martin: So I talked a little earlier about pressure

on fees being a big challenge at the moment. We had

to adapt by industrializing our operations to optimize

costs. Apart from that, regulatory compliance is

certainly top-of-mind.

We have a very strong culture of compliance, and we

have been staying up-to-date year after year in terms

of what we need to do. Our commitment to compli-

ance has meant that over the years, we have devel-

oped a great process for approaching regulation. For

instance, it is smarter sometimes to wait rather than

being the first one to implement. I don’t mean that we

leave it to the last minute, but rather, you need to

sense when the right moment to implement new

regulations is. If you do it too early, then the rules may

change, and then we are forced to start over. If you

wait to late, you may rush things or worse, not be

ready for go-live. So there is a balancing act to

consider.

Journal: What is the solution to overcoming these

challenges? Is it organizational or is it technological?

Régis Martin: It is definitely both. Obviously you need

to have the technology, but you also need the people

and processes in place if you are to manage the

technology and use it properly. As I see it, people put

the processes and technology in place and after that

it is a matter of managing this triangle as efficiently as

possible.

Sometimes the technology may only be 1% of the

solution. You must remember that it is a tool, it won’t

solve all the issues for you. That means that if you

don’t have the right people and processes in place,

then you can’t use it properly.

Journal: There are a lot of different ways Unigestion

can grow, but do you see new product offerings, M&A

activity, and entering new geographies as relevant

methods for Unigestion?

Régis Martin: We believe in organic growth. To drive

this growth, we set up dedicated sales force five years

ago which was complimented with an alternatives

sales team and a distribution sales team in 2016.

M&A is of course always an option, but only when

there is a really good match. So this is on an opportu-

nity-basis only. We have no plans or desire to buy for

the sake of buying. Integration of another company is

never as easy as people think, so it really has to be a

perfect match.

We are also expanding globally. We have seven offices

around the world, the most recent one in Canada in

2014. IT plays an important role in growth. To grow, we

need help sustaining it with our IT platform. We want

to offer more sophisticated products, more alternative

products and our IT platform is an enabler for this.

Our previous inhouse built platform couldn’t support

new financial instruments.

Journal: Unigestion is known for its innovative research

strategies – can you tell us a bit about them?

Régis Martin: As a boutique asset manager with scale,

innovation helps us punch above our weight. Two years

ago, we established a process to support innovation in

the organization.

Being able to deliver these higher levels requires that we can cope with them in the back end. This is really important and requires that you standardize and auto-mate your internal processes. RÉGIS MARTIN, DEPUTY CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER AND CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, UNIGESTION

Journal | Innovation for Growth 4

We have a dedicated innovation process in place where

anyone can come with an idea, which may lead to a

product or service for clients. We have established a

five step innovation process. From idea generation to

transformation into a product, an investment solution

or simply enhancing an existing process.

By formalizing the process, everyone knows what to

do, and there is a better flow of ideas. There are a lot

of great ideas, but it is also important that we don’t

stray too far from our core business. So we need to be

good at selecting the really good ideas and putting a

lot of attention and effort into them.

There is a fine balance between pushing new ideas, to

finished products, but also selecting what to put effort

behind, and what to leave. Important way to sell our-

selves against the big players. What we also love to

do is to co-create with clients. Usually it comes from

pieces of research that we share with a client and

then become the cornerstone of something tailored

for them or even shared with other clients having the

same needs. We recently launched two co-created

products that a client helped to seed and that are now

available for everyone. This is greatly appreciated by

the team.

Journal: Thanks very much for sharing your interesting

insights with us. Is there someone in the global asset

management industry whom you would like to pass on

the CXO Corner interview relay?

Régis Martin: I would like to hand over to Philippe

Ricard, Global Head, Asset & Fund Services, BNP

Paribas Securities Services. With his considerable

professional experience, I am sure he will have some

interesting things to say about what he views as

the biggest challenges and opportunities facing the

industry going forward.

We have established a five step innovation process. From idea generation to transformation into a product.RÉGIS MARTIN, DEPUTY CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER AND CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, UNIGESTION

JOURNAL OF APPLIED IT IN INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT

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