Régis Pinguet : “The two criteria used to select ETFs are its assets under management and on the other hand its replication methodology.”

Next-Finance : In which context, do you use ETFs ?

Régis Pinguet : We use ETFs our equity capital, and for retirement contracts of some institutional clients. These are supplementary retirement contracts concluded within the framework of the company, between the employer and his employees. Under these contracts, sometimes we have to replicate stock market indices on request, therefore we use ETFs to do that.

What are their weighting in your portfolio? How has it changed in recent years?

For the time being, the weight of ETFs is very small in our global portfolio (nearly 350 billion euros) : around 246 million euros. On the other hand, we have been using these products for a long time at the request of certain customers as I told you.

For which asset classes do you use ETFs? In what proportion? it is going to increase in the coming months ?

We use ETFs only for equity markets, more specifically worldwide stock markets (for equity capital) and european ones (for retirement contracts) because our liabilities are denominated in euros and we do not wish to expose ourselves to too much diversification. Unless specifically requested by our customers, we do not intend to change this proportion in the near future.

The two criteria used to select ETFs are its assets under management - in order to respect regulatory ratios - and on the other hand its replication methodology.

Régis Pinguet, head of the fund selection and analysis department at CNP Assurances

How do you select your ETFs? What are your selection criteria?

The two criteria used to select ETFs are its assets under management - in order to respect regulatory ratios - and on the other hand its replication methodology. On the specific point, we exclusively use trackers offering a physical and not a synthetic replication.

More and more institutional investors are using smart beta ETFs? What do you think ? Are you also doing that ?

This is another kind of index management. Currently, we do not use ETFs replicating smart beta strategies.