A turning point in fund selection. It could face significant changes with this restructuring
14 SEPT, 2026
The fund selection industry in Europe is watching closely as ABN Amro Investment Solutions (AAIS), the €34bn Paris-based asset manager, considers a restructuring that could see nearly half its 90-strong workforce depart – and with it, potentially, a chapter that helped define open-architecture investing on the continent.
A pioneer's origin story
AAIS traces its roots to AAAdvisors, a Parisian multimanager founded in the late 1990s by Stéphane Corsaletti, who led the business until 2019 and now chairs Allfunds Investment Solutions. Acquired by ABN Amro in 2004, the platform grew as a centre of expertise in fund manager selection for the Dutch banking group. It weathered the 2008 financial crisis and a subsequent restructuring before entering the 2010s just as open-architecture fund selection was gaining real momentum across Europe – a period that saw the discipline mature from broad asset-allocation calls into far more granular, fund-by-fund analysis.
Why now
AAIS says the review responds to pressure from passive investing, rising regulatory and technology costs, and consolidation across asset management – echoing a broader wave of cuts at parent group ABN Amro, which announced 5,200 job losses (more than 20% of its workforce) last year. AAIS currently draws about 90% of its business from within the ABN Amro group; a larger external partner could bring greater scale and negotiating power with the outside managers it selects.
The firm insists core investment duties will stay in-house: AAIS would retain oversight, risk management, regulatory responsibility and final say on manager selection, even if a partner helps source candidates going forward.
What's next
No partner has been named, and AAIS describes the plan as exploratory. It must still clear France's employee-consultation process – the works council has roughly two months to give its opinion, followed by about a month for regulatory sign-off – with clarity expected by year-end and implementation potentially starting in 2027.
Whether the research-driven culture that built AAIS's reputation survives the transition – and what role, if any, AI plays in whatever comes next – remains, for now, an open question.
RankiaPro Francophone expert view
Francisco Estela Moreno, Investor Relations Specialist Francia & Benelux
The potential restructuring at ABN AMRO Investment Solutions marks a concerning moment for European fund selection. Beyond the sheer numbers, with a significant reduction in roles representing a substantial part of the organisation, the human and strategic implications cannot be overlooked.
For an entity whose success has been built on deep internal expertise, robust due diligence and a pioneering sub-advisory model, the contemplated reduction raises important questions about the preservation of intellectual capital and institutional knowledge. AAIS has developed highly specialised teams whose expertise has been accumulated over many years of manager research, due diligence and close interaction with asset managers across strategies and geographies. A transition of this scale will inevitably represent a major organisational challenge, particularly when redeploying such specialised talent internally appears difficult.
While ABN AMRO’s broader strategy under Marguerite Bérard seeks to address rising technology costs, pressure from passive investing and the need for greater scale and efficiency, applying this approach to AAIS raises legitimate strategic questions.
AAIS has long stood out as one of the market’s most recognised and respected centres of expertise in open architecture. Its experienced investment professionals, research capabilities and robust due diligence framework have played an important role in establishing its reputation in Paris and across Europe.
Outsourcing core research and support activities to an external partner may generate cost efficiencies and provide access to greater scale (but still needs to be demonstrated). However, it also raises the question of whether those efficiencies adequately compensate for the potential loss of accumulated intellectual capital, institutional knowledge and in-house manager research capabilities.
This creates an apparent paradox with the stated ambition to “further strengthen its investment capabilities”. When a significant part of the experienced team underpinning those capabilities is affected by the contemplated outsourcing model, the question is not simply whether the new structure will be more efficient, but whether it can genuinely preserve the depth of expertise, institutional knowledge and independent judgement currently held in-house.
The strategic issue therefore extends beyond cost reduction. Manager selection and operational due diligence depend not only on processes and data, but also on experience, judgement and the ability to challenge investment managers, capabilities that are built over time and can be difficult to replicate once dispersed.
As the employee consultation unfolds, the broader market will therefore be watching closely to see whether the proposed strategic partnership can deliver the expected efficiencies while preserving the essence of a team that has helped define high-conviction manager selection for more than two decades.
Ultimately, the success of the transformation may be judged not simply by the cost efficiencies it achieves, but by whether AAIS emerges with genuinely stronger investment capabilities, or finds itself accessing externally expertise that it had spent decades building in-house.
