Now is the time to consider overweighting investment portfolios to Asia to take advantage of future growth in the region, a leading global fund manager has said.
Fidelity Australia managing director Michael Ohlsson said the meteoric rise of India and China has made a profound change on the investment landscape.
Yet, while Australian's demand for Asian funds has increased by 60 per cent in the past year, Australians still have very relatively little exposure to the high growth region, Ohlsson said.
"That's part of a natural delay factor," he told an investment forum in Melbourne.
"It will take time for investors to gain confidence in developing economies. They want to see political stability, a legal system that recognises property rights, that a country's economic growth is sustainable and to have confidence in a country's investment infrastructure."
Countries such as China, India and East Asia are increasingly scoring better on these issues, Ohlsson said. It is just a matter of time before the growth of their economies is reflected in the size of their sharemarkets.
At the same forum, Fidelity Asia Pacific chief investment officer Kathryn Matthews said that the impact on markets flowing on from the rise of the Indian and Chinese consumer has only just begun.
People under 25 - the workers and the consumers of the future - represent 40 per cent of the population in China, and half of the Indian population.
Wage growth in these countries is amongst the highest in the world, feeding into a growth in personal disposable income of 12 per cent in India and 10 per cent in China last financial year. This burgeoning group of relatively wealthy consumers is fuelling a demand for consumer products such as mobile phones and cars.
"The potential for further growth in these consumer products is enormous," Matthews said.
Insurance is another product that is set for high growth in a region that has little in the way of social security safety nets, she said.
