TOBAM, the French quantitative asset manager, has launched its existing anti-benchmark Canadian equity strategy under the format of a UCITS IV fund.

The Anti-Benchmark Canada Equity Fund seeks to maximise diversification by bypassing the sector, country and style biases that more traditional allocation methods such as market-cap weighting can lead to, the firm said.

The fund aims to outperform the SP/TSX equity cap-weighted benchmark by four to six per cent per annum over a market cycle, while at the same time delivering significantly less volatility, it added.

“Local and international investors in the Canadian market are coming to the realisation that buying the cap-weighted index is not a neutral position. On the contrary, the Canadian market-cap weighted index carries heavy biases and concentration risk that investors can avoid. The anti-benchmark approach makes particular sense in the Canadian market, as it allocates across risk factors and expands the amount of diversification captured compared to a traditional index,” said Yves Choueifaty, president of TOBAM.

TOBAM manages more than $3.5 billion via its anti-benchmark strategies for institutional clients worldwide.