Commentary on Property Fund Statistics: Market share of Service AIFMS in open-ended special property AIFs to around 60%

20. May 2019

Service AIFMs have become key players on the market for open-ended special property AIFs in Germany. This has been found by a comparison of the market shares of management AIFMs and service AIFMs in new business. Open-ended special property AIFs raised around EUR 3.6 billion in total in 2012. Service AIFMs accounted for EUR 752 million of this, corresponding to a market share of 21%. Six years later, in 2018, the share of service AIFMs has virtually tripled to 59% (EUR 4.7 billion of EUR 8.1 billion).

Michael Schneider, Managing Director of INTREAL, commented: “More than half the money that institutional investors invested in open-ended special property funds went to service AIFM funds. This confirms the trend towards the division of work into administration on the one hand and property management on the other. After around ten years, the service AIFM principle is finally established on the market. As regulatory and other administrative requirements will keep on rising, I predict that service AIFMs will continue to gain in significance.”

INTREAL plays a key role in this development. Its share of the proceeds of the three major service AIFMs has been between 30% and 50% since 2013. INTREAL has consistently raised funds of more than
EUR 1 billion per year since 2015, and in 2017 it even took in more than EUR 2 billion. Michael Schneider added: “INTREAL has succeeded in positioning itself as one of Germany’s top three service AIFMs in the first ten years of its history. The open-ended special property AIFs we manage raised a net amount of EUR 1.8 billion in 2018. This corresponds to a market share of around 38%.”

An analysis of the current net fund assets under management rather than net inflows of new money also clearly illustrates the growth of service AIFMs: In 2013 the administration specialists had a combined total of EUR 4.6 billion in net fund assets, giving them a market share of 11%. Six years later, in December 2018, service AIFM funds already have EUR 27.5 billion, which means that they have increased their net fund assets more than fivefold. At the same time, their market share has climbed to around a third.

These developments must also be considered against the backdrop of the property boom and the industry’s considerable growth. In 2009, net fund assets under management in open-ended property special funds amounted to EUR 28.6 billion in total. Just nine years later, at the end of 2018, this figure had risen to EUR 89.9 billion.

A service AIFM is a fund management company licenced by BaFin that performs all administrative duties for asset managers and sets up property funds. Work is divided between administration and asset management. Property management is performed by the asset manager. By contrast, a management AIFM has its own licence from the regulator and also manages its properties itself.
The above analysis is based on BVI statistics. The figures for the three major service AIFMs (HANSAINVEST, INTREAL and Universal Investment) are assigned to the group of service AIFMs.

Read the full-length press release https://www.intreal.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/2019_05_16_Commentary-on-Property-Fund-Statistics.pdf