According to AMP senior portfolio manager Steve Flegg, the decision reflects the company’s desire to diversify investment portfolios and take advantage of the growing interest of Australian citizens in digital assets. The investment was solely for the purchase of Bitcoin futures, and AMP currently does not anticipate increasing the share of cryptocurrencies in its global investment portfolio by more than 0.05%.
Flaggy added that the high level of competition in Australia’s superannuation industry required market participants to regularly weed out underperforming products. Unfortunately, several levels of pension products offered by AMP fell out of favor and failed the stress test this year, the manager said.
Anna Shelley, AMP’s chief investment officer, attributes investment in Bitcoin futures to the disruptive structural changes in the digital asset industry in recent years. In particular, the launch of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States that directly invest in Bitcoin and Ethereum has been received optimistically by leading investment managers around the world.
A year earlier, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) reported that, as of the end of 2023, more than 600,000 Australian self-managed superannuation funds (SMSFs) declared they were investing in digital assets. Compared to the same period in 2019, the growth of cryptocurrency holdings of non-state pension funds increased by more than 400%.
Source: Bits
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