Many asset managers are owned by insurance companies, since insurance companies tend to have a lot of assets to manage. For some years before the financial crisis, these managers were often seen as stick-in-the-muds, propped up only by having a large and captive client in their parent companies.

“We’d been berated for being an insurance-owned manager, or categorised with the bank-owned asset managers,” says Niall Paul, deputy chief executive of Aviva Investors London. During the credit crunch, however, “the power of Aviva was incredible”. Being able to call on the insurer’s expertise and connections in order to understand and manage the asset manager’s exposure to the Lehman Brothers’ default last year was valuable, he says.