Skandia will launch a unique range of 20 single manager funds, which will enable UK financial advisers to access some of the worlds best institutional fund managers for the first time.
Advisers will be able to incorporate these fund managers into their asset allocated portfolios via the Skandia Investment Solutions platform and Skandias life and pensions products.
The new fund range will be known as Signature and will be managed by Skandia Investment Group (SIG). Signature will contain the best managers across 10 asset classes, as identified by SIGs 40+ strong investment team, one of the largest fund research teams in Europe.
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.
SIGs extensive research resources, larger than UK fund ratings agencies, 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 10 different investment sectors with some sectors containing multiple fund options, others will have one. The sectors and number of funds are:
Property 1UK Fixed Interest 2International Fixed Interest 3UK Equity 4European 2North American 3Japanese 1Far East ex Japan 2Global Specialist 1
Skandia is developing this new investment proposition in line with the changing investment services being offered to customers by financial advisers. Research* carried out for Skandia by NMG has shown that financial advisers are increasingly structuring their services to provide solutions that are appropriate for a particular client or client segment. While there are a number of different approaches employed, the research identified four broad strategies:
Bespoke portfolio of funds
Pre-defined portfolios selected by the adviser
Asset-allocated portfolios using researched funds
Fully outsourced solutions
Skandias existing Self Select fund range of over 1,000 funds meets the demand for bespoke and pre-defined portfolios, while its Spectrum range of risk rated funds meets the demand for fully outsourced solutions. The Signature funds have been developed to meet the demand for outsourcing fund manager selection, monitoring and switching to SIGs global investment research team, while retaining asset allocation control over their clients portfolios.
D.C.