We specialise in the management of central bank reserves. Crown Agents works with over 30 central banks globally.
Central Banks
At CAIM we do not consider ourselves to be “only” investment managers. As an institution with a long and rich history of providing technical assistance to government entities and managing reserves assets for central banks since the 1980s, we keenly appreciate the need to offer knowledge transfer and advisory services as part of every partnership with a central bank. We do not want to manage generic investment mandates on a transactional basis; we seek to become trusted advisors to every official institution we work with. We achieve this by forging collaborative relationships that cover strategic issues well beyond reserves management, including governance, stakeholder education, broad national balance sheet management issues, strategic asset allocation, and facilitating dialogues between central banks and other national institutions.
While the basis of each relationship is an investment management mandate, knowledge transfer and capacity building is an integral part of our offering.
Sovereign Wealth Funds
We leverage our expertise across asset classes to provide bespoke multi-asset portfolios for institutions with relatively higher return objectives and risk tolerance, including sovereign wealth funds. Our sovereign fund design and asset allocation tool suite brings together the various moving pieces in establishing and managing commodity wealth-based investment vehicles, and allows policymakers to assess the effect of various choices on the fund’s parameters and outcomes, also allowing for an environment of uncertainty and volatile markets.
The model also serves as a tool to facilitate discussions among various stakeholders, encouraging coordinated policy decisions. Our model relies on several inputs, some country-dependent, some more broad-based, including:
Assumptions on trade, balance of payments, commodity production in near and distant years;
Fiscal rules that translate potential inflows into actual revenues for the government.
Savings/spending decisions that direct current revenues to the various funds, or to current budget expenditures;
Fund design and purpose: number of funds and objectives (e.g. fiscal stabilization, intergenerational wealth transfer, meeting specific liabilities, etc.).
Assumptions on domestic growth, currency and inflation trajectories;
Fund asset allocation decisions.
Short and long-term capital and commodity market and economic assumptions, using either CAIM’s forward-looking asset allocation models, market consensus or user assumptions.
CAIM’s solutions & advisory staff have advised institutions managing over $1.5 trillion in investment assets.