Challenger Financial Services Group is building a separate distribution team for its boutique funds management business, hiring eight new sales staff.

The company has appointed Cathryn Franks as Challenger boutiques national sales manager.

Franks joined from Amundi Asset Management, where she was head of retail sales.

"What we've done is we now have got a separate team focussed on boutique distribution, whereas in the past we had a mingled team," Challenger boutique partnerships general manager Michael Lovett said.

"We've still got one distribution team, but we have two groups one focussed on boutiques and one on our life business," he said.

Franks is currently recruiting sales staff to join the boutique team.

"Cathryn is building a team of, including herself, of eight people. There are some internal people going in, but she is also on the path of recruiting a number of people at the moment," Lovett said.

"We are hoping [to finalise the recruitment] within the next month," he said.

Lovett said the decision to create a separate team for boutiques was driven by the growing size of the business.

"We've now got 10 boutiques, all at different stages, but we've raised a lot of institutional money and our retail book is growing really well and we really thought we needed a team focus on it," he said.

"We are very confident in our boutique stable, growing both institutional and retail wise, so we would expect good growth over the next 12 months," he said.

The total funds under management (FUM) of the combined boutique business stood at just over $13 billion at the end of March this year.

This figure is expected to grow to $15 billion at the end of June 2011, Challenger chief financial and operating officer Brian Benari said last week at a presentation at the UBS Financial Services Conference.