Targeting financial planners with new and highly-rated funds is a key priority of BT Investment Management (BTIM) in the immediate future, according to the firm's chief executive Emilio Gonzalez.
"If you look at our $35.4 billion under management, $4 billion of that comes from financial advisers, so we have already made a substantial investment in attracting flows from that channel," he told InvestorDaily.
"We need to put a bit more emphasis on the brand, marketing and sales distribution side of it and get out there and support advisers with the products that we have, specifically the ones that are highly rated.
"You will see increased spend on marketing and sales from us."
He said the firm was assessing building new products, including a defensive fund and a diversified fund.
"We are more focused on cash and income and are looking to develop a flagship product in that space," he said.
BTIM had capabilities in areas such as government bonds, credit, cash and global income that it could package into a strategy tailored for planners' clients, he said.
"We have surveyed planners in terms of what products they want and we got a couple of clear messages: they want a true-to-label conservative product where the defensive classes behave defensively and income acts like income," he said.
"There is another segment that can tolerate minor volatility in the underlying price in order to allow us to grow their capital and deliver an income-type return."
He also said a real return diversified fund, which could invest and exit asset classes when they did or did not make sense, was also potentially on the drawing board.
