Challenger Financial Services expects to see continued growth of its boutique funds management business, both organically and through acquisitions, but said it is likely to grow more slowly than in 2010.
"We obviously had a bit of a stellar year, because we had a strong organic growth. We went from $2 billion to $7 billion in funds under management," Challenger Financial Services chief executive Dominic Stevens told InvestorDaily.
The recent addition of Alphinity and the spin off of Challenger's small and mid-cap business will bring the total funds under management (FUM) of the boutique business to $9 billion.
"We see some strong growth in the second half - we still have a good pipeline on our existing names - it will still be a significant growth," he said.
"I would be a happy that the FUM would be close to north of $10 billion when we next talk about it," Stevens said.
Challenger will continue to look at new boutique acquisitions, he said.
"We had the Credit Suisse asset management piece, which was sort of an opportunistic purchase. If we see other bolt-on opportunities like that I think we will definitely look at them," Stevens said.
"But having the operations going and getting the brand up and running, it is usually good to have a bit of a pause and integrate what we've got," he said.
Challenger yesterday reported its results for the year ending 30 June 2010.
The group's net profit came in at $283 million, compared to a loss of $91 million in the previous year.
Total assets under management grew from $19.6 billion to $23.9 billion.
Challenger is still looking for a solution for its Howard Mortgage Fund, which has had limited redemptions since October 2008.
"We are working on that expeditiously to be able to give a result to unitholders around liquidity and hope to give an answer on that in the near future," Stevens said.
"What we see in that fund is that 50 per cent of people haven't actually requested liquidity, so we've got a fund here where some people want their money out and there are also a lot of people who are sitting there and are happy with the returns.
"We want to put a proposal together that will serve the needs of both of those people."
Stevens hoped to have a solution within the next few months.
