One year on from the launch of the Allianz RiskMaster range, all four funds have performed in line with or exceeded expectations.
The funds are Allianz RiskMaster Defensive, Allianz RiskMaster Conservative, Allianz RiskMaster Moderate and Allianz RiskMaster Growth.
The Allianz RiskMaster Defensive, for example, returned 12.4 per cent, whilst the Allianz RiskMaster Growth delivered 19.0 per cent, over the one year. All four funds remained within their expected risk categories despite exceptional market movements.
The Allianz RiskMaster range, designed to help advisers align their clients’ risk profiles with the appropriate investment solution, focuses on risk and potential returns by providing an actively managed, risk-profiled, multi-asset solution. The funds combine both strategic and dynamic asset allocation which ensures broad diversification across a wide selection of asset classes and mitigates risk whilst capturing upside potential.
Nick Smith, head of sales at Allianz Global Investors, says: “We launched these funds to give advisers an investment solution for their clients which had clear risk parameters and the potential for real returns to meet their long term investment needs.
“Over the year, all of the funds in the range have done what they said on the tin. This is reassuring for advisers and backs our belief that RiskMaster makes perfect sense in a financially repressed environment. We firmly believe that controlled risk is the way to encourage investors back into the market which, as we know, is more important than ever when interest rates remain low and, with high levels of government debt, we are likely to experience future surprises in inflation.”
To demonstrate the importance of risk management and the confidence in their risk management capabilities, AllianzGI made a risk promise when it launched the funds. If any RiskMaster fund had its launch risk category changed by Distribution Technology, AllianzGI agreed to waive the fund’s annual management fee for three months following the change. All the funds have remained in their original Distribution Technology risk categories 4, 5, 6 and 7 and AllianzGI has extended its risk commitment for a further 12 months.
Smith says: “The fund suite was designed to address the post-RDR landscape challenges, the ‘advice gap’ in particular. When designing the funds, we envisaged the fund industry gradually shifting from a focus on ‘return oriented’ to ‘outcome oriented’ and we think that shift is not only coming about but starting to pick up pace. With their clear risk profiles, the funds remove the onerous task from advisers of constructing, managing and monitoring individual client portfolios. This provides a way for advisers to offer a solution to a large section of their client base – particularly at the smaller end – at low cost.”
