Nordea Asset Management (NAM) has received approval from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (Finma) as a manager of collective assets, the asset manager announced on Tuesday.

This step comes one year after entering the Swiss market for institutional clients, marked by the appointment of Carl Hollitscher as Head of Institutional Clients Switzerland and Cynthia Strahm as Senior Relationship Manager. While the asset manager previously held a distribution license for the wholesale market, the new authorization now enables it to manage institutional mandates in Switzerland.

«The Finma license is a key step toward our growth ambitions in Switzerland. It allows us to work more directly and flexibly with institutional investors on the ground,» said Cristian Pappone, Regional Head Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein at NAM.

Agreement with Cantonal Banks

Last year, Nordea secured new mandates worth approximately 5 billion euro globally—primarily in the areas of responsible investment, climate, and decarbonization.

In Switzerland too, the demand from pension funds and institutional investors for sustainable and tailored solutions continues to grow, the company stated. Earlier this year, Nordea Asset Management signed its first agreement with a cantonal bank under a new strategic partnership model for its BetaPlus product line. This enhanced indexing strategy, managing over 60 billion euros in assets, aims to deliver attractive excess returns through a proven quantitative approach. The product line can be customized in terms of benchmarks, tracking error, and individual decarbonization targets.