JPMAM targets growth in Aussie instos, UHNW segments

J.P. Morgan Asset Management (JPMAM) said there is growing demand from the ultra-high-net-worth segment in Australia.

Speaking at the JPMAM 2026 Asia Summit, JPMAM Asia Pacific chief executive Dan Watkins said the Australian market is the second most exciting opportunity for the asset manager in the APAC region, coming in behind China.

"I would say Australia is the second largest opportunity. Obviously, it has a fantastically structured retirement system with superannuation clients, but there's also a very exciting wealth and ETF market in Australia," Watkins said.

"ETFs are the real big growth engine, I think, for the region. We've grown our business fivefold since 2021, and really, I think we've only just got started."

Watkins said while institutional clients remain the main part of JPMAM's business, the private wealth sector is growing rapidly.

"If I talk about distribution, institutional is still the anchor of our business across the APAC region. Institutional assets are still 70% of the industry. So, you've got to continue to serve your institutional clients well. Give them great performance. Give them great, great service," he said.

"I will say the significant growth is happening in the wealth space. We have grown our own private bank assets by 50% in the last 12 months. Within that, we've grown our private wealth alternative assets by 40% in the same period. So, you really have this huge appetite for alternative exposure happening in that ultra-high-net-worth and high-net-worth category."

Watkins said JPMAM has been targeting a huge amount of growth in the APAC region, with institutional clients and the private wealth sector driving growth, aiming to be a $600 billion asset manager by 2030.

"I'm delighted to tell you that we're almost a third of the way there after one year. So, things are progressing very nicely our growth plan. But you need a strategy. You need a strategy across distribution. You need a strategy across markets. You need a strategy within columns," he said.

Watkins said JPMAM will continue to focus on active ETFs, adding institutional investors continue to show enthusiasm.

"What we found is that we've had a lot of success in the institutional space with ETFs, where institutional clients are looking at it as a liquidity option or as an asset allocation, and in the retail space where clients are increasingly buying ETFs through the brokerage channel, or frankly, self-directed investing, buying ETFs on their own as they used to buy stocks and shares," he said.

"So that's a whole new growth engine for us. So, I actually think the better characterisation of what's going on in ETFs is it's creating new use cases that almost sit very comfortably alongside the nuclear fund."

However, Watkins warned investors against thinking there is "such a thing as an APAC ETF strategy."

"You have to be very thoughtful about how you enter each market with ETFs. Some markets are ready for a local ETF business, and we've done that in Australia, in China, in Thailand, but in other markets you can just register the ETF and be just as successful," he said.

"So, you have to be very thoughtful, and again, quite local in how you think about your strategy."

Financial Standard was a guest at J.P. Morgan Asset Management's 2026 Asia Summit.