Willis Towers Watson launches Asset Management Exchange

Consultancy Willis Towers Watson has launched a new institutional asset management marketplace, The Asset Management Exchange (AMX), to connect asset owners and asset managers.

AMX is designed to be a global marketplace with centralised back office and standardised fund infrastructure, which Willis Towers Watson said will give scale benefits to both sides, while increasing transparency and asset owner control. Willis Towers Watson CEO, John Haley, commented: “In the past 20 years, our lives have been transformed by innovation. Technology is breaking down barriers and challenging the inefficiencies which have burdened many industries for far too long. The resulting marketplaces tend to be fairer, quicker and more transparent.”

AMX is being launched with $750 million of delegated hedge fund assets from clients of Willis Towers Watson’s investment business. The new service is being launched first in the UK and will initially focus on providing cost-effective and simple access to hedge fund strategies, with additional asset classes added later. Willis Towers Watson global head of investment, Chris Ford, commented: “We have long contended that intermediaries in the investment industry have taken too much out of the value chain to the detriment of the end saver. We believe AMX will change this by standardising and centralising the investment vehicles that managers and investors use thereby reducing overall costs and increasing marketplace transparency and competition.”