BNY Mellon opens offshore funds to UK retail market

BNY Mellon Global Funds is adding a UK retail share class and UK distributor status to five of its specialist offshore sub-funds.

The move will make the range of portfolios accessible to professional advisers for the first time,

The fund will also be available on major platforms including Cofunds, Transact and Ascentric.

Listed in the IMA sectors earlier this year, the offshore funds will now be regulated by the same cross-EU fund legislation as UK-based UCITS funds.

Alan Mearns, chief executive officer of BNY Asset Managment International, believes many overseas funds are unattractive to UK investors, as they were previously subject to higher fund charges and required different minimum investments than UK-domiciled funds.

“Historically, offshore funds in the UK were not on the radar of most professional advisers because they were not on the mainstream platforms.

“With the decision taken by the IMA to allow offshore funds to be included in their fund sectors, we are now able to provide professional advisers with access to a whole new range of funds.” Mearns says some of these are front leaders in investment management in their respective markets.

BNY Mellon will offer exposure to equity markets through the Mellon Vietnam, India and China (VIC) fund and the Global Emerging Markets Equity Value fund.

The former is managed by Hong Kong-based Hamon and focuses on expanding equity growth markets. The latter applies a bottom-up, quantitative-based investment strategy under the stewardship of the Boston Company Asset Management and seeks to outperform the MSCI Emerging Markets Free index by 300 basis points over a full market cycle.

The Brazil Equity fund, a long-only fund managed by BNY Mellon ARX, concentrates on detecting stocks with attractive valuations, strong cashflows and sustainable earnings.

Meanwhile, the Emerging Markets Debt Local Currency fund will allow allocations in the fixed interest range. Managed by Standish, it seeks investment opportunities in local currency-denominated debt market among emerging economies.

In the international real estate sector, the Global Property Securities fund holds a diversified portfolio of exchange traded securities and is managed by US investment manager Urdang.