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How to distribute your funds in France and French-speaking Europe

If you manage a fund domiciled outside France and you are trying to work out how the French institutional market actually functions, this is where to start. Not the marketing brochure version — the one written by someone who spent nineteen years on the buy side of these decisions in Paris, first building the CGP and insurer channel for a French banking group, then eighteen years running Third Party Marketing engagements for boutique managers entering France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Monaco. Each article below covers one part of the process: what regulatory passporting actually gets you, who the real buyers are, what it costs to build a presence, what selectors expect from a pitch, and how the CGP and unit-linked distribution layer works. Read them in order if you are starting from zero, or jump to the one that answers the question you are actually asking this month.

Who this is for

Written for a Head of Distribution, Head of International Sales, or CEO at a boutique or mid-sized asset manager outside France, with no French office and no French track record yet, evaluating whether — and how — to enter the French institutional market.

  1. Distributing a UCITS fund in France: registration is the easy part

    Passporting a UCITS into France takes a few weeks. Getting a French institutional investor to allocate takes twelve to eighteen months. Here is what happens in between.

    8 min read

  2. The French institutional buyer map: who allocates, what they buy, and how long it takes

    Insurers, multi-managers, private banks, CGP networks, family offices: five very different buyers hide behind the word 'institutional' in France. A field guide for foreign asset managers.

    9 min read

  3. Hiring a salesperson in Paris, opening an office, using a platform or a third-party marketer: what entering France actually costs

    A senior institutional salesperson in Paris takes twelve to eighteen months to produce. Here is what that money buys, what it doesn't, and the alternatives.

    9 min read

  4. CGPs, unit-linked lists and platforms: the French adviser layer, explained to foreign asset managers

    Every conversation in Paris mentions the CGPs. Almost nobody explains to a foreign manager what they are, how they buy, or why you should not try to sell to them in your first two years. Written by someone who built that channel from scratch.

    10 min read