Advisor | December 2025
The relationship between asset management companies (AMCs) and financial advisory networks is becoming increasingly important. Financial advisors, even top-tier ones with above-average portfolios, want to work with more AMCs than a year ago, recording significant growth for the second year running.
We are far from the highs reached in 2019, when financial advisors aspired to work with over twenty AMCs, which, when multiplied by the number of products each offers, produces a catalog that is difficult to manage.
The desire to have access to the best on the market and therefore the best AMCs is a given, and while guided architecture seems to have prevailed over open architecture, there is no doubt that the ability of some asset management companies to win the hearts of financial advisors remains unchanged.
Especially if they are able to achieve three objectives.
The first is the uniqueness of the offering, whether it be an asset class, a management style, or a geographic area, it doesn’t matter. The key is to stand out from the plethora of asset management companies that seem to offer more or less the same solutions. Knowing how to stand out is a prerequisite for standing out in an increasingly competitive market.
The second objective is the quality of service offered by asset management companies (AMCs), meaning the ability to provide vision, advice, and training to professionals, in concert with their clients: efficient head office staff, well-trained sales staff, and strategists with broad vision and clear ideas make and will increasingly make the difference.
The third objective is related to product performance: returns and a positive track record are necessary conditions for professionals to choose them, but only if they are consistent and supported by a unique offering and consistent quality of service.
Making the AMCs’ mission more challenging than expected are certain market trends, including competition from BTPs, the advent of ETFs, delegated management, and a process of valorizing the distributor’s internal AMCs.
All this against a backdrop of Italians’ strong predisposition toward bond investments over equity investments, which, over the long term, have provided increasingly greater satisfaction.
The response from asset management companies was clear and immediate, expanding their ETF offerings, including active ones, offering target dates, and target maturities with BTP-style coupons. This has further widened the gap between the more powerful and capable large asset managers and the smaller boutiques forced to focus on excellence in active management.
The market is grateful, because this is having a beneficial effect that will ultimately benefit the entire industry. The higher the quality of service and products, the more distributors can count on competent and well-trained fund selectors and buyers, the more stringent the selection process will become, and the more the best will emerge.
After all, there is no alternative to the pursuit of quality, or at least it is difficult to find in a sector that intends to continue growing, and perhaps even more so in the future.
The selection process is just beginning, and, as always, the best will win.
Nicola Ronchetti