Skandia rolls out 20 funds

Skandia is to launch a range of 20 single manager funds, giving retail investors first-time access to a line-up of global institutional managers.

The new range is to be managed by Skandia Investment Group (SIG) and will be known as Signature. The funds will be awarded to managers who have been identified by SIG’s 40-strong investment research team across several asset classes.

Skandia says 18 of the 20 funds are new to the UK market, with most of the managers only accessible to institutional investors.

The range includes one property fund, two UK fixed interest, three international fixed interest, four UK equity, two European equity, three North American equity, one Japanese, two Far East excluding Japan, one global specialist and one unspecified strategy.

Once the fund managers have been confirmed, advisers will be able to incorporate the funds into their asset-allocated portfolios via the Skandia Investment Solutions platform and life and pensions products.

Each fund will have only one manager, which means the range will compete directly with the broader retail universe rather than just multi-manager solutions, Skandia says.

The group has developed the range in line with the changing investment services offered by IFAs.

It says advisers are increasingly structuring their services using four broad strategies, including the use of bespoke portfolio of funds, pre-defined portfolios selected by the adviser, asset-allocated portfolios using researched funds, and fully outsourced solutions.

It says while its existing Self Select fund range meets the demand for bespoke and pre-defined portfolios and its Spectrum range of risk-rated funds caters for those seeking fully outsourced solutions, the Signature funds will meet investors’ needs in terms of outsourcing fund manager selection, monitoring and switching. This will instead be carried out by SIG’s global investment research team, while advisers retain asset allocation control over their clients’ portfolios.

“The Signature funds meet the growing demand from financial advisers for different approaches to portfolio construction and management,” Skandia head of investment marketing Graham Bentley says

“Advisers can retain control of the asset allocation and style-tilt decisions within their client portfolios, but utilise the resources of SIG’s global investment research team to identify the best fund managers in each investment sector.”