NH-CA Asset Management, a joint venture between NH Financial Group of Korea and Amundi of France, will strengthen its sales and marketing of overseas funds this year, with more weightage given to overseas stocks and alternative investments, its chief executive said Tuesday.

CEO Han Dong-joo said the company hopes to raise its assets under management to 36 trillion won ($30.9 billion) this year from 29 trillion won in 2015, and hopefully to 60 trillion won by 2020.

“We plan to sell up to 1 trillion won in overseas funds this year, although our sales team says the overseas markets are really tough now,” he said at a press conference in Seoul, one year after taking office as CEO in March last year.

“We have our partner Amundi, which ranks within the top 10 global asset management firms, with various know-hows and products. We will ‘internalize’ their system to nurture overseas fund business,” Han said.

Chief investment officer Lee Kyu-hong elaborated that the asset management company will give more weightage to stocks than bonds, as the company expects the global economy to gradually recover. While the local stock market is likely to walk sideways due to some distressed conglomerates, the global stock market will slowly recover, Lee said.

NH-CA Asset Management is the nation’s seventh largest in terms of AUM but hopes to make it to the top 5 by 2020, Han said.

To manage bigger assets, Han almost doubled the number of employees to 47 from 25 in just one year and created seven more teams including alternative investment division and research.

NH Financial Group has a 70 percent stake in NH-CA Asset Management and Amundi, a subsidiary of French financial group Credit Agricole, has 30 percent.

By Kim Yoon-mi (yoonmi@heraldcorp.com)