The latest news in investment offerings, financial products and other services relevant to wealth advisors and their clients.

Fidelity International
Fidelity International, a global asset manager and retirement savings business, is launching the Fidelity WealthBuilder Model Portfolio Service (MPS) – a new range of globally diversified model portfolios designed to give advisors greater flexibility in meeting evolving client needs.

Fidelity WealthBuilder MPS is built around three complementary portfolio ranges, enabling advisors to align investment style, cost and outcome expectations to individual clients. Each range contains seven modelled portfolios with defined risk and return parameters. All portfolios are rated by Defaqto, Dynamic Planner, FinaMetrica, Mabel Insights and Synaptic.

The active range is designed for clients seeking enhanced returns through high-conviction active management, the firm said in a statement. The blended range targets clients prioritising balance and consistency, combining active and passive strategies to deliver global diversification across market cycles. The passive plus range is built for cost-conscious clients seeking efficient market exposure, selecting low-cost passive strategies from managers.

Available from mid-April, Fidelity WealthBuilder MPS will be delivered through an open architecture structure, supported by 10 exclusive managed funds that serve as core holdings across the portfolios. The managed fund structure will provide portfolio managers with a broad toolkit to access equities, fixed income and alternative assets via mutual funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and direct securities and exchange-traded commodities (ETCs), alongside index futures and options, the firm added. The portfolios can incorporate both Fidelity and third-party strategies across UK, European, US, Japanese, emerging market and global equities, global bonds and specialist alternatives.

From mid-April, advisors will be able to access Fidelity WealthBuilder MPS across a range of distribution platforms including Fidelity Adviser Solutions, Quilter, Aberdeen, Aviva and Transact, among others.

Guinness Ventures
London-based Guinness Ventures has launched the Guinness Founders SEIS, a new service designed to invest in early-stage UK companies under the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme.

The Guinness Founders SEIS is targeting a raise of £3 million ($4 million), aiming to build a diversified portfolio of 10 to 20 investee companies. Each company will receive between £100,000 and £250,000 of funding to support it through the earliest stages of commercialisation, the firm said in a statement.

Investments will focus on the business services, consumer, and healthcare sectors, targeting ambitious founding teams that are typically pre-revenue or early-revenue, where capital and strategic support can drive meaningful value creation.

SEIS offers tax incentives available to UK investors, including 50 per cent income tax relief, capital gains tax reinvestment relief, and tax-free growth on qualifying shares held for at least three years. Investors can subscribe from a minimum of £20,000. 

The Guinness Founders SEIS is targeting full deployment in the 2026/27 tax year. Subscriptions are open, with a closing date of 5 April 2026.

Standard Chartered
London-headquartered Standard Chartered has launched its latest sub-fund under its variable capital company (VCC) structure, in partnership with Seviora Capital, a member of Seviora Group, a Temasek-owned asset management group based in Singapore.

The current volatile market environment, accentuated by weakened bond diversification, higher equity-bond correlations and more frequent drawdowns, has resulted in investors looking for ways to manage market volatility. Diversification strategies such as multi-strategy and relative value hedge funds have historically proven to deliver more resilient absolute returns across cycles, the firm said.

The Signature Select Seviora Titans Absolute Return (STAR) fund provides access to a high-conviction portfolio. In particular, investors in STAR can benefit from diversification, given that there is no over-concentration in any single manager or sub-strategy, access to hard-to-access hedge funds, and lower minimum investment.

STAR will be made available to high net worth clients from Standard Chartered’s private banking segment, with accredited investors and/or professional investors status, based in Singapore, Hong Kong and Jersey. The fund will also be made available progressively to clients in other segments in the coming months, the firm said.

“We are delighted to partner with Seviora Capital to bring this Fund of Hedge Funds to our high net worth clients who are looking for a diversification strategy amidst current volatile markets. This solution adds to the diversity of our VCC suite of funds, which offers products across all asset classes,” Sumeet Bhambri, global head, advisory and managed investments, wealth solutions at Standard Chartered, said.

“The ability of the STAR strategy to allocate to a portfolio of hedge funds with low correlation to public markets, can improve diversification of clients’ portfolios, which is vital in today’s volatile macro and market environment,” Leow Li-Vern, managing director, investments, Seviora Capital, added.

St James’s Place
UK wealth manager St James’s Place (SJP) has made a series of changes to the St James’s Place Global Equity fund as part of the ongoing development of its investment proposition.

SJP said it will appoint Acadian Asset Management as the new investment advisor to the fund, replacing the current advisor line-up. The fund will continue to be benchmarked to the MSCI All Country World Index.

SJP said it is updating the fund’s sustainability disclosures to provide greater clarity on how the fund seeks to maintain a lower carbon footprint than the benchmark index. These features have been part of the fund since 2021; the enhanced disclosures are designed to improve transparency for clients.

To reflect this, the fund will be renamed: St James’s Place Global Lower Carbon Equity Unit Trust (previously the St James’s Place Global Equity Unit Trust).

“By moving to an active, systematic investment approach and enhancing sustainability disclosures, we are strengthening the fund’s ability to capture global equity opportunities while maintaining a clear focus on lower carbon intensity,” Justin Onuekwusi, chief investment officer at St James’s Place, said.