Cyprus fund industry sees 10.3% q-on-q growth to €8.58bn

The value of  total Assets Under Management with Cyprus funds reached €8.58 billion in the 4th quarter of 2020, a 10.3 per cent increase from the third quarter of that year. Assets under management also increased 3.8  per cent from the same period in the previous year, according to the latest Quarterly Statistics bulletin published by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC).

CySEC has 283 Management Companies and Undertakings of Collective Investments (UCIs) under its supervision, of which 197 have operations.

More specifically, CySEC supervises 164 Externally Managed UCIs, 56 Internally Managed UCIs and 63 External Fund Managers. The total number of Management Companies includes 31 Alternative Investment Fund Managers (AIFMs), 81 Subthreshold AIFMs, three UCITS Management Companies and four dual license entities (AIFMs and UCITS Management Companies).

A new regulatory category was introduced in the statistics for the 4th quarter of 2020, following the 2020 Law that came into effect on July 3, 2020, regarding the Small Alternative Investment Fund Managers, the so-called Small AIFMs. There are 17 Small AIFMs that represent Cyprus Investment Funds (these had received approval from CySEC for the provision of AIF management functions ).  These are considered Small Managers following the implementation of the 2020 Law regarding the Small Alternative Investment Fund Managers.

The UCIs, which are managed by the Management Companies, had a Net Asset Value (NAV) of €6.99 billion. Approximately 52.5 per cent of the AUM relates to assets managed by the AIFMs, while 22.1 per cent are managed by Sub-threshold AIFMs, 20.7 per cent by AIFMs and UCITS Management Companies, 3.9 per cent by UCITS Management Companies and only 0.8 per cent by the Regulated UCIs that are managed by Foreign Fund Managers.

Finally, regarding the specific sectors that UCIs invested in during the 4th quarter of 2020, the AUM in the Energy sector totalled €246.2 million (2.86 per cent of total AUM), while €29.9 million was invested in fintech (0.35 per cent of total AUM), €72.1 million in shipping (0.84 per cent of total AUM), €28.1 million in the sustainability sector (0.32 per cent of total AUM) and €1.5 million in cryptocurrencies (0.017 per cent of total AUM).