, Columnist
Banks Get Stress Tested. So Should Asset Managers.
Europe gets it, but the U.S. doesn’t.
Another risk to worry about.
Photographer: Gary Yeowell/Digital VisionThis article is for subscribers only.
In the decade since the financial crisis, the banking industry has been subjected to regular stress tests designed to prevent finance from ever again trashing the global economy. But the asset management industry has escaped similar scrutiny. That may be about to change — in Europe, at least.
Recent industry trends have heightened the need to assess the resilience of asset managers to shocks. The sheer size of the industry, as demographic trends make the pool of global savers bigger, older and richer, means assets under management are equal to about one year of total world economic output and have grown by almost 50 percent since the start of the decade.