Financial professionals who want to set up a hedge fund but balk at the sometimes high set-up costs are being offered a new package to get their business plans off the ground, according to backers of an umbrella fund venture that held its official launch in London this week.

Called the Primary Development Fund, the “cost-effective start-up solution”, as marketing literature describes it, provides non-regulated managers with a Cayman-registered platform on which they can create their own segregated portfolio/sub-funds. The PDF is administered by ifina group, based in the UK. The banker to the PDF is Barclays Wealth (Isle of Man), its broker is MF Global Direct and the legal advisor is Solomon Harris, with Baker Tilly (Cayman) as auditor.

The rollout of the umbrella fund comes at a time when would-be hedge fund managers, faced by investor demands for high transparency and liquidity, are looking for more cost-effective ways to start up in business with robust controls and back-office support.

While there is no upper limit on how large the sub-funds can be, investors must commit at least $100,000 each.  There are no restrictions on managers eventually choosing to break free of the PDF structure, should they choose to do so.

As described by ifina last September, the PDF is designed to enable managers with very low assets under management to establish a fund without many of the costs associated with a standalone fund. The firm says managers using the platform will be charged about half of the normal cost of setting up such a fund.

Initially, the PDF will be registered in the Cayman Islands although there are moves afoot to also use the British Virgin Islands for a large banking client, ifina has said.