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Swiss Life Asset Managers is the asset management arm of Swiss Life. The company manages the assets of its own insurance business as well as assets of institutional customers and offers fixed income, real estate, equity, infrastructure, and multi-asset investment solutions.

With a total of 274.4 billion Swiss francs under their management of which 30% are in real estate, the company is a leading European real estate manager and among the top 10 worldwide. Swiss Life Asset Managers has several subsidiaries which allow its operations to expand into Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Luxembourg.

Origins
The activities of Swiss Life Asset Managers originated in the creation of Schweizerische Rentenanstalt in 1857, which would subsequently become the Swiss Life group. In 1858, the company invested in a loan through a mortgage bond for the first time, to pay for their clients’ annuity contracts (future life insurance contracts). This investment activity gradually diversified within the insurance company, which notably invested in railway bonds over the following decades, and then began investing in the field of real estate in 1893.

In 1986 Schweizerische Rentenanstalt launched a new business area offering asset management services for third-party clients. In 2004 the Schweizerische Rentenanstalt is rebranded as Swiss Life. In 2012, Swiss Life created the brand Swiss Life Asset Managers under which all of its asset management activities are combined together.

Acquisitions
The real estate investment activities of Swiss Life Asset Managers mainly grew from the end of the 1990s from successive external growth operations through the acquisition of other companies. In 1999, Rentenanstalt bought out Livit Real Estate Management, which at that time made up one of the main real estate service providers in Switzerland. Over the years, Livit became a 100% branch of Swiss Life Asset Managers but continues to this day to conduct business under its own brand.

In France, Swiss Life Asset Managers acquired the company Viveris REIM in 2011, specialising in real estate investment funds. Three years later, this new acquisition would be incorporated into Swiss Life Asset Managers as Swiss Life REIM, managing 23 funds for a total outstanding amount of 4.5 billion euros. In 2019 the entire French asset management business was fully consolidated into Swiss Life Asset Managers.

Swiss Life Asset Managers arrives onto the German market in 2014 via the acquisition of Corpus Sireo, a company specialising in real estate asset management. The company strengthens its presence in the country in 2018 with the acquisition of BEOS, a German business real estate investment company (logistics centres, in particular) who at that time managed assets for a total value of 2.6 billion euros. The two German subsidiaries kept their name and still operate under their own brand until 2021.

In 2016, the company enters the British market with the acquisition of Mayfair Capital, a real estate investment company based in London. At the time of it being bought out, the company’s assets under management totalled around a billion British pounds. Mayfair Capital, from then on overseen by Swiss Life Asset Managers, also kept its name and is still operating under its own brand within the group.

In 2019 Swiss Life Asset Managers acquired Fontavis, a Swiss infrastructure investment company specialising in the field of clean energy (hydropower, wind farms, electric power grids, solar panel installations, and recycling). At the time of its acquisition, the company managed around a billion Swiss francs through three funds.

General overview
Swiss Life Asset Managers’ operations consist of investing its clients’ assets in financial markets, as well as in the field of real estate, infrastructure, fixed income and multi-asset equities.

The company distinguishes between its management operations for insurance companies from its parent company (so-called Proprietary insurance Asset Management, generally referred to by the acronym "PAM") and its management operations for third-party clients (institutional and private investors not insured with Swiss Life), operations referred to using the term Third-Party Asset Management ("TPAM"). As of June 2021, the assets under the company’s management were divided between 175.5 billion Swiss francs managed for Swiss Life (PAM), and 98.9 billion Swiss francs managed for third-party clients (TPAM), totalling 274.4 billion Swiss francs worth of assets under management.

Due to the scope of its investment operations, Swiss Life Asset Managers manages a large number of properties in Switzerland, earning the company, and by extension its parent company Swiss Life, the rank of "leading property owner in Switzerland". The company also features among the three biggest property owners in Europe and is the third biggest asset manager in Switzerland for institutional clients.

In 2020, Swiss Life Asset Managers had 2,400 employees, with 88% of them working in the field of real estate. Among them, around 1,100 employees worked in the Livit branch and more than 680 in the Corpus Sireo and BEOS branches in Germany. In France, the company had around 250 collaborators.

PAM and TPAM Management
Swiss Life Asset Managers’ activities in the "PAM" branch consist of managing the total assets for the Swiss Life balance sheet from the payment of clients’ insurance premiums for insurance against specific risks, which incorporates the amounts deposited with a savings goal for life insurance or pension contracts.

Regarding asset management for third parties (TPAM), the company manages investment funds in which institutional investors (banks, insurers, pension funds) and private investors are permitted to invest freely. At the end of 2020, 42% of the total managed assets for third parties by Swiss Life Asset Managers was invested in real estate funds, 21% through various management assignments, 20% in bond fonds, 7% in share funds, 6% in money-market funds, and 4% in infrastructure funds. The real estate assets managed and administrated by the company mostly consist of office and residential buildings, but also business properties, hotels, medical buildings, warehouses and industrial buildings, which had a total value of 105 billion Swiss francs at the end of 2020.

In 2018 Swiss Life Asset Managers signed the charter for "Principles for Responsible Investment" from the United Nations (UN PRI), and became a member of the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB). From this date, the company incorporated environmental, social, and governing criteria to its total investment options. In this context, Swiss Life Asset Managers was awarded the "Green Star" from GRESB for several of its real estate funds and received the socially responsible investment for France, for several of its investment funds in assets and real estate. The company also announced its goal to invest 2 billion Swiss francs in green bonds by 2023.

In the field of education Swiss Life Asset Managers created the "Swiss Life Study Award", accompanied by a monetary prize, to promote and support students at the end of their degree courses presenting a high quality thesis from their studies in finance. This prize has been awarded each year since 2014 in partnership with the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and the German-language Swiss economic newspaper Finanz und Wirtschaft. In France, Swiss Life Asset Managers funds a research chair at EDHEC's Risk Institute.

Locations
In geographical terms, the head office for Swiss Life Asset Managers is located in Zurich. Also in Switzerland are the head offices for Livit (Zurich), and Fontavis (Baar). In Germany, Swiss Life Asset Management GmbH is located in Garching bei München (near Munich). The Corpus Sireo head office is located in Cologne and BEOS’ in Berlin. In France, the administrative head office for Swiss Life Asset Managers France is located in Marseille while its teams are mostly located in Paris. This subsidiary came from the 2019 merger between the entities Swiss Life Asset Management (France), specialising in investments in financial markets, and Swiss Life REIM.

In the United Kingdom, Swiss Life Asset Managers is present in London where the head office for its Mayfair Capital branch is located. Finally, the company owns a subsidiary in Luxembourg, "Swiss Life Asset Managers Luxembourg", where some of its European law investment funds are located.