Flows into fixed income funds slow as investors turn to global equities
Popularity of passives helps Royal London, BlackRock and Vanguard
Fixed income funds saw a lower level of net inflows in February, while the global large-cap blend equity Morningstar category attracted the most assets during the month, according to the latest fund flows data.
The Morningstar Manager Research UK fund flows data for February showed that fixed income attracted £155m in net inflows, with the lower level of flows "particularly noticeable", Morningstar said, compared to the strong net inflows seen throughout 2019.
But equity funds had their fourth consecutive month of net inflows following net redemptions last year.
Total net inflows for UK-domiciled funds excluding money market funds stood at £126m in the month, lower than in the previous two months.
BlackRock tracker takes bulk of £1.3bn sustainable allocations
The Global Large-Cap Blend Equity category recorded a net inflow of £816m in February, 87% of which went into passive vehicles.
Of these, the low-carbon equity tracker offered by BlackRock saw the highest net inflow at £213m, according to Morningstar, although the actively-managed Royal London Global Equity Drivers attracted net £164m in February.
Morningstar data showed that Alternative Multistrategy has consistently been the category with the highest net outflows over the past 18 months.
Invesco Global Targeted Returns clocked up this category's highest net outflow in February at £343m, although this was less than it experienced in autumn 2019, the data showed.
Invesco lost another 2% of its UK-domiciled assets as investors continued to withdraw heavily from the group, Morningstar said.
In the same category, Jupiter Absolute Return recorded a net outflow of £267m after a poor performance in the first two months of 2020, with the I share class total return negative 12.6% to the end of February.
The Jupiter fund is now £657m in size, having peaked at £1.7bn just 14 months ago, according to Morningstar.
Alternative funds continued to shed assets, with another net £1bn withdrawn last month, while Allocation funds have been attracting assets, as strong equity and bond markets up until February boosted their performance.
Investors continued to flock to passive vehicles during the month, helping net subscriptions to reach just over £2bn in February, as net outflows from active vehicles reached £1.9bn.
Morningstar data shows flow of assets from active to passive in 2019
The fund groups that have been attracting assets continued to see net inflows in February, including Royal London, BlackRock and Vanguard.
Royal London's trio of UK-domiciled money market funds saw a combined net inflow of £382m during the month, while UK equity trackers from BlackRock, Vanguard, and Royal London in the UK large-cap equity category attracted £908m collectively.
Bhavik Parekh, associate analyst, manager research at Morningstar, said: "BlackRock and Vanguard have reaped the benefits of the strong popularity of passive vehicles in recent years, and the story was no different in February. However, their active vehicles also saw net inflows in February.
"Vanguard's global active funds, which were launched in 2016, grew at a steady rate until 2019. Since then, assets have grown at a higher rate, especially for Vanguard Global Balanced and Vanguard Global Emerging Markets."
Parekh added: "Vanguard has been careful to position these funds so as not to cannibalise their passive counterparts."
More on Bonds
Most read
