EDHEC-Risk Asian Index Survey 2011

Indexation continues to play an important role in global asset allocation. Total worldwide assets under internal indexed management rose from $4.781 trillion to $5.994 trillion as of June 30, 2011 – a 25% increase from one year earlier (Olsen 2011). In view of the growing volume in assets under management in passive indexing strategies, a great many index providers have emerged worldwide; not only the organisations specialising in the index service but also stock exchanges as well as investment banks. Each provider has created or is creating a host of indices representing a full complement of asset classes, as well as asset class segments. In the history of indices, country-based capitalisation-weighted indices have proved to be the most popular indices for both equity and bond markets. Such indices are often used as a bellwether for the economy, as they are supposed to represent market trends. Today, a growing demand for indices as investment vehicles has led to innovations including sector, style and size based indices which provide exposures to specific risk factors. As the choice of an index is a crucial step in both asset allocation and performance measurements, it is useful to investigate index use and perceptions about indices. In fact, relatively little is known about the views of potential users of indices in the Asia Pacific region. The EDHEC-Risk Asia Indexing Survey 2011 is the first comprehensive survey of Asian investment professionals which aims to analyse the current uses of and opinions on stock and bond indices. It is our hope that this survey will provide unique insight into the users’ perspective of the index industry. The survey was conducted during April and May of 2011, and received a total of 127 responses. The respondents provided a balanced picture of the Asia Pacific asset management industry and include asset managers, institutional asset owners, investment consultants and private wealth managers of different size categories. While we have included Japan in the survey, responses from Japan are relatively low at 4% of total respondents. Thus the survey mainly represents respondents from Asia Pacific excluding Japan, and in particular the major asset management centres of Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore, which each account for roughly 20% of overall respondents.