Fiduciary Management

Fiduciary management is a new approach to asset management, originated in the Netherlands and UK at the beginning of the 21st century. It concerns mainly the management of assets of institutional entities, such as pension funds or insurance companies. The main goal of a fiduciary manager is to design and implement a comprehensive investment strategy, so that to ensure that the institutional assets are managed in an optimal and efficient manner.

Alternative Models of Fiduciary Management

The concept of “fiduciary management” being quite new has derived various alternative readings. In one of these interpretations, the notion of fiduciary manager coincides with that of asset manager, namely an investment expert, whose principal aim is to ensure that the institutional assets are managed in accordance with the principles of modern portfolio theory and professional practice.
In the context of an alternative (and, admittedly, more interesting) interpretation, the fiduciary manager serves as a “manager of asset managers”. Specifically, the fiduciary manager acts as a coordinator and evaluator of the individual asset managers, aiming at assessing the risk-return characteristics of the overall portfolio.