French Asset Management Association (AFG)
Presentation of the Partner
About the Association Française de la Gestion Financière (AFG)
The French Asset Management Association (Association Française de la Gestion Financière, AFG) is the professional organisation representing the French asset management industry. Asset management is about helping retail and professional investors to provide for their future and achieve other long-term goals. Individuals and organisations entrust their savings to asset managers, who seek to increase their value by investing in the real economy via companies’ shares or bonds, government bonds, and infrastructures’ assets.
The French asset management sector is the largest in continental Europe: 630 asset management companies employ directly and indirectly 85 000 people and invest on behalf of their clients up to 4 000 billion euros in bonds, shares and other assets. More than 50% of the management companies distributes their funds abroad. More than 30% of the assets managed by our members are issued by corporates or states of the Euro zone (excluding France), which makes our industry a key source of funding for the European economy.
AFG is an active member of EFAMA and PensionsEurope.
www.afg.asso.fr; follow us on Twitter @AFG_France
Presentation of the Partnership
Objectives
The Association Française de la Gestion Financière has contacted EDHEC-Risk Institute for a partnership on a digital outreach project with a focus on “Financial Risk Management as a Source of Performance”, based on a series of digital research outreaches. The main focus of the partnership is to build upon EDHEC-Risk expertise in risk management, but also on its reach and credibility as the academic thought leader in the area of risk and investment management, to enhance the international impact and visibility of the initiative.
Investment management is the art and science of efficiently spending investors’ dollar and risk budgets so as to help them solve some of the important problems that they face. Meeting this challenge involves an efficient use by institutional/individual asset owners, or by investment managers servicing them, of the three form of risk management within a comprehensive disciplined investment framework
• Diversification, which allows investors to be efficient at taking risk, that is to most efficiently harvest risk premia across and within asset classes;
• Hedging, which allows investors to be efficient at not taking risk, that is to construct truly safe goal/liability hedging portfolios through cash-flow or factor exposure matching;
• Insurance, which allows investors to secure their essential goals via the hedging portfolio while achieving a substantial probability of reaching their aspirational goals, via the use of dynamic strategies and/or derivatives.
The academic and professional presentations will be articulated around 3 main themes, which represent these three main forms of risk management, namely diversification, hedging and insurance. The focus of this partnership will be on the first theme, namely diversification, which allows EDHEC-Risk Insttiute to cover three main subjects:
1. Harvesting risk premia across asset classes: Multi-asset products and solutions
2. Harvesting risk premia within asset classes – Part I: Smart beta in equity
3. Harvesting risk premia within asset classes – Part II: Smart beta in fixed-income
Press release announcing the creation of the research chair (September 2017)
About EDHEC
Operating from campuses in Lille, Nice, Paris, London and Singapore, EDHEC is one of the world’s top 15 business schools. Fully international and directly connected to the business world, EDHEC commands a strong reputation for research excellence and the ability to train entrepreneurs and managers capable of breaking new ground. EDHEC functions as a genuine laboratory of ideas and produces innovative solutions valued by businesses. The School’s teaching is inspired by its research work and a focus on “learning by doing”, all with the aim of equipping people with the skills to succeed in business.
