Skandia is to launch a range of 20 single manager funds, which will enable UK financial advisers to access some of the world’s best institutional fund managers.
Advisers will be able to incorporate these fund managers into their asset allocated portfolios via the Skandia Investment Solutions platform and Skandia’s life and pensions products.
The new fund range will be known as “Signature” and will be managed by Skandia Investment Group.
Signature will contain the best managers across ten asset classes, as identified by SIG’s 40+ strong investment team. Of the Signature range, 18 funds are new to the UK market.
The fund manager line up for the range is still to be confirmed but all of them will be world class fund managers, most of whom are not accessible to UK investors because they traditionally only undertake institutional, rather than retail, business.
Importantly, each fund will contain only one manager, thus the range will compete directly with the broader retail universe, rather than just multi-manager solutions.
SIG’s research resources will select the fund managers which it feels will deliver superior alpha from the entire global universe. It will closely monitor the activity of these fund managers, switching the mandates to new managers if it identifies greater investment opportunities for customers.
The Signature range will cover ten different investment sectors with some sectors containing multiple fund options, others will have one.
The sectors and number of funds are: property (one); UK fixed interest (two); international fixed interest (three); UK equity (four); European (two); North American (three); Japanese (one); Far East ex Japan (two); and global specialist (one).
Graham Bentley, head of investment marketing at Skandia, says: “The Signature funds meet the growing demand from financial advisers for different approaches to portfolio construction and management. Some advisers like to research and select funds themselves but increasingly advisers are looking to focus more on their clients financial planning needs and outsource elements of their investment service. Managed investment solutions such as risk rated funds allow them to outsource both asset allocation decisions, fund selection and risk control, but Signature offers a further option. Advisers can retain control of the asset allocation and style-tilt decisions within their client portfolios, but utilise the huge resources and expertise of SIG’s global investment research team to identify the best fund managers in each investment sector.”
