BNP Paribas Asset Management won across multiple categories in Asia Asset Management’s 2025 Best of the Best Awards, including the performance award for Global Technology (3 years). The company also walked away with country awards for Best Investor Education and Best Islamic Asset Management Company in Indonesia; Best ESG Manager in Malaysia; Best Asset Management Company (30 years); and Best ESG Engagement Initiative in Singapore. Across the ASEAN region they were recognised as Best Client Servicing Manager; Best ESG Manager; and Best Climate Change Strategy. AAM spoke to two of their regional leads on the strengths behind this series of successes.
“In terms of prospects for business there’s great opportunity across the region”, says Angelia Chin-Sharpe, BNP Paribas CEO for Singapore, head of distribution for Southeast Asia, and a member of the Asia Pacific regional leadership team. “With all the diversifying of production, we also see growing wealth in most Southeast Asian countries, in Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. There’s growing opportunities and a need to look at product solutions supporting people in their savings plans.” She emphasises in particular the capability of international platforms like BNP Paribas to bring solutions and diversification to the region’s markets that can assist both developing pension systems and individual investors.
Maya Kamdani, president director for PT BNP Paribas Asset Management in Indonesia, details the favourable conditions in the local economy that are helping to drive the appetite for investment solutions: “The economy grew about 5% last year; inflation was also manageable at around 1.57% year-on-year in December 2024. Our fiscal policy is quite healthy; and we have a positive balance of payments”. With the penetration of investment products still relatively limited, she continues, there is also a growing need for investment alternatives.
BNP Paribas has also built itself a substantial position in the Indonesian market, with some US$2.1 billion under management, with around 74% in mutual funds and most of the rest in discretionary mandates. BNP in Indonesia has had particular success in an area singled out by Chin-Sharpe as especially important for the region – offering access to offshore opportunities – in this case, Shariah-compliant funds, where BNP locally boasts around 38% of this market segment.
BNP Paribas supports its Southeast Asian presence with three offices in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, each with its own specialised investment team, and each offering access to the firm’s global platform. Both Singapore and Malaysia offices manage Asian equities and fixed income, while the Indonesia office is primarily local equities and fixed income, with supplementary Shariah products. “Markets in the region have come back,” Chin-Sharpe confirms.
On top of the local expertise in each office is the global layer of BNP Paribas’s international capabilities. “We are part of a large global institution, and that’s what we try to offer the market as well,” Kamdani adds. “We try to bring global expertise and global standards that we have in-house to the region’s investors.”
She also highlights BNP’s ability to showcase this combination of global and local expertise by bringing new offerings and innovations to the region, such as thematic funds, Greater China themes, and global technology themes in an index fund format.
Regarding ESG-compliant investment in the region, “there’s a lot of questions being asked,” affirms Chin-Sharpe. “I think it’s still very relevant in the region,” she adds. With the firm’s Asia Pacific head of stewardship based in Singapore, BNP Paribas is very actively engaged across the region, supporting the sustainability proposition, she says, pointing to the significant presence of many companies in ASEAN in the global supply chain and the need to incorporate them into the transition towards low-carbon production. “That’s well supported by regulators and governments.”
Kamdani goes on to outline how BNP Paribas has built its position in ESG and sustainable investing in Indonesia through the same methods that won it recognition for its investor education. “We started off very slowly, building awareness and educating the market first,” she explains. “By providing education and enhancing awareness we tried to relate it to people’s lifestyles and their daily lives.” BNP Paribas launched its first local ESG fund in the Indonesian market in 2023, focusing on local equities, she adds, and by mid-2024 was able to fully integrate all ESG criteria into all its local mutual fund investing.
BNP Paribas has an enduring focus on and presence in emerging markets, Chin-Sharpe concludes. It’s certainly a position that seems to have paid off in this year’s awards.
