According to Jannie Leach, head of core investments at Nedgroup Investments, the new fund aims to provide investors with low cost exposure to a range of global asset classes. The fund will be managed by Nedgroup Investments Best of Breed partner, BlackRock Investment Management (UK).
"The Nedgroup Investments Core Global Fund is a low-cost global balanced portfolio that is used for the offshore exposure within the Nedgroup Investments Core Diversified and Nedgroup Investments Core Guarded funds. It has been designed to provide sensible offshore exposure for a Regulation 28 compliant mandate and complements our existing Core range," says Leach.
According to Leach, more and more South African financial advisors are incorporating lower cost multi-asset unit trusts into their clients' portfolios, which have up to now been dominated by actively managed unit trusts, as a tool to reduce overall costs without compromising on long-term investment outcomes.
Leach believes that traditional passive investing has evolved into what he refers to as rules-based investing. "As the number of alternative indices, quantitative investment and 'passive' strategies has grown, the distinction between active and passive investments has become less clear, so our view is that 'rules-based' investing is a more appropriate term for these investments. Rules-based balanced portfolios follow pre-defined rules that determine the asset allocation and underlying asset class and benchmark selection," he says.
