A look back at ten years of Keyprivate

Our Keyprivate asset management recently celebrated its tenth anniversary – the perfect time to look back with pride on how our asset management has performed over this period. But first, let's take a look back at 2025 and its two key influential trends.

2025 was certainly not a poor year in macroeconomic terms. Economic activity remained positive in both the United States and Europe, with no recession or slowdown in growth.

Take a look at Graph 1, which shows the trend in global manufacturing confidence in the industrial and service sectors. The manufacturing confidence remained above the important level of 50 points throughout the year.

A figure above 50 points indicates economic expansion. In the United States, investments in AI infrastructure (such as data centres) were the primary factor underpinning growth, while in the eurozone decisions made by various governments to increase investment in infrastructure and defence proved to be a driving factor. Western central banks also kept their fingers on the pulse, and the monetary easing policy (i.e. lower short-term interest rates) gave businesses and consumers enough oxygen to boost economic growth.

Graph 1: Trend in global economic activity

Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence

Two trends

2025 saw two major trends on the financial markets. Non-US shares, for example, performed far better on the stock market than American shares and the price of gold rose spectacularly. Investors who reacted to these trends at the right time achieved good returns.

Graph 2 shows the trend reversal on the international stock markets in 2025. In this relative graph, an upward trend means that US shares (which make up around 70% of the MSCI World Index) are outperforming shares from emerging countries (such as China, India, Brazil and Taiwan). On the other hand, a downward trend means that the shares from emerging countries performed better.

An upward trend is visible for 2025, primarily thanks to US technology shares. From January 2025, however, a long period of relative US strength came to an end as emerging-market shares took the lead. European shares also returned a strong performance in 2025.

Graph 2: Shares from developed countries vs shares from emerging countries

Source: Bloomberg

Furthermore, no-one could look beyond the sharp rise in the gold price in 2025, which rose by more than 40% in euro terms. Such an excellent performance can be explained by international geopolitics. After the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and the announcement of sanctions against Russia, it is worth noting that Asian central banks, in particular, significantly increased their gold holdings. What's more, these gold purchases received a further boost after Donald Trump's election as president of the United States, which is clearly shown in Graph 3. For the first time since 1996, gold has a greater weighting in the reserves of non-US central banks than US government bonds. Gold also acts as a hedge against any potential falls in the US dollar.

Graph 3: Gold/US government bonds in central bank reserves

Source: Crescat Capital

The Keyprivate Investment Committee followed these two persistent trends from 2025 closely:

• In early March 2025, we decided to reduce the weighting of the MSCI World tracker and increase the weighting of non-US shares.
• We remained invested in gold throughout 2025 in the commodities component of our Keyprivate portfolios.

Net returns of Keyprivate portfolios 2016 – 2025

Table 1 shows the result over ten years of investing in our diversified Keyprivate portfolios. We would like to add a number of comments:

• In the first few years, thenet returns evolved well, and in 2018 we were able to limit the losses.
• At the start of 2019, it became clear that our investment policy was too defensive (i.e. we had too little exposure to shares and too much cash in the portfolios) just as the stock markets were entering a new upward trend. As a result, our net returns lagged behind other asset managers somewhat.
• We carried out extensive tests in 2020 in order to adapt our strategy, with the new strategy approved by Keytrade Bank's executive committee at the end of 2020.
• Our modified strategy deliveredvery good net returns from 2021 tothe end of 2025 in a particularly volatile period that saw Donald Trump's return as president of the United States, war in Ukraine and rising inflation figures.

Table 1: Net returns 01/01/2016 – 31/12/2025

Note: These net returns were calculated based on real portfolios established on 4 January 2016 (the first trading day of 2016). These portfolios have therefore been through every rebalancing process. These returns are net, i.e. after the deduction of annual management fees and any taxes.

After ten years of Keyprivate and five years with our new strategy, the Keyprivate Investment Committee was interested to see how our portfolios compare to our main competitors on the private banking market in Belgium. As a result, we turned to Morningstar for the main in-house funds held by the major banks and private banks.

You should bear in mind that we are comparing two different financial products here, as the managers of these actively managed, in-house funds will select individual shares or bonds based on their own knowledge and experience in an attempt to outperform the market. At Keytrade Bank, however, we made the choice at the time to invest not through actively managed investment funds, but instead through trackers. In other words, using trackers allows us to buy the entire market as it were, resulting in us always achieving the market return. Read more about the differences between trackers and actively managed funds here.

In the Keyprivate Investment Committee, we seek to include in our selection of eight trackers those that are most suitable for our customers based on the current market situation.

This approach has resulted in the following average annual returns for defensive, neutral and dynamic risk profiles:

Table 2: Defensive risk profile

Source: Morningstar

Table 3: Neutral risk profile

Source: Morningstar

Table 4: Dynamic risk profile

Source: Morningstar

*Here, too, we can make the following observations about our Keyprivate portfolios:

• Excellent net returns over the period 2021 – 2025.
• 2025 was a high-performing year thanks to our diversified approach (gold, overweight in non-US shares in the portfolios).
• We have been in the middle of the pack since the launch in 2016, although this is due to the over-defensive investment strategy in 2019.

You should also bear in mind that any entry fees and/or other taxes relating to the actively managed investment funds have not been included in this comparison.

The returns of the actively managed investment funds analysed are sourced from Morningstar (www.morningstar.be), and the actively managed investment funds are accumulation funds.

The returns show the annualised financial return based on the net asset value of the funds between the closing prices on 31 December 2015 and 31 December 2025, on 31 December 2020 and 31 December 2025 and on 31 December 2024 and 31 December 2025.

Past performance offers no guarantee of future returns.

Conclusion:

2025 was better than expected in economic terms, as there were no signs of a slowdown in growth. In the financial markets, gold turned out to be the star and, for the first time in a long time, US shares were outperformed by European or emerging-market shares.

Our Keyprivate portfolios responded to these trends and were therefore able to return excellent results. From a long-term perspective, we can certainly say that our diversified portfolios have performed strongly in recent years.