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

St James’s Place
St James's Place has recently made more changes to its manager line-up on three of its funds: the Global Smaller Companies, Global Emerging Markets, and Emerging Markets Equity funds.

Clients invested in the Global Smaller Companies fund and the Global Emerging Markets fund will see a reduction in their total ongoing charges. While clients invested in the Emerging Markets Equity fund will see a small increase in their total ongoing charges.

Global Smaller Companies fund 
-- Northern Trust Global Investments Limited has been added as the sole manager of the fund, with Robert Bergson as lead portfolio manager;

-- The fund is expected to evolve into a multi-manger fund over time; and

-- The external fund manager charge will reduce from 0.60 to 0.06 per cent per annum.

Global Emerging Markets fund 
-- Robeco Institutional Asset Management BV has been added as the sole manager of the fund, with Tim Droge and Han van der Boon as lead portfolio managers; and

--The external fund manager charge will reduce from 0.30 to 0.15 per cent per annum.

Emerging Markets Equity fund 
-- Aikya Investment Management has been added to the current line-up of fund managers – ARGA Investment Management, Lazard Asset Management and Wasatch Global Investors.

-- Ashish Swarup will be the lead portfolio manager; and

-- The external fund manager charge will increase from 0.37 to 0.39 per cent per annum.

“The changes we are making to the Global Emerging Market fund and Global Smaller Companies are designed to specifically add lower cost strategies to our platform and therefore continue a theme of providing investors with more choice. Active quantitative strategies can be incredibly effective when accessing less covered areas of the market at an attractive price point. This is key to our fundamental belief to offer choice, innovation, and variety to investors of all type,” Tom Beal, executive director of investments, St James’s Place, said. “The team’s defensive, quality-oriented approach blends especially well with the existing growth and value managers in-situ.”

MetLife
MetLife Investment Management, the institutional asset management business of US-listed MetLife, has launched the MetLife Emerging Markets Hard Currency Debt Fund. 

This is the first UCITS fund to be launched by MetLife Investment Management Europe Limited after the Central Bank of Ireland gave it a green light in 2022.

The fund is jointly managed by Thomas Smith and Todd Howard, portfolio managers in MIM’s Public Fixed Income investment team. The fund invests in publicly traded debt of sovereign, quasi-sovereign, and corporate issuers in emerging markets. It is actively managed by reference to [and seeks to outperform] the JP Morgan Emerging Market Bond Index Global Diversified benchmark.

The fund will be registered for sale initially in Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the UK.

FE fundinfo
FE fundinfo – a global provider of fund information, technology and services – will launch its newly-developed fee and distribution channel management services in early 2024.

The service will support asset managers with rebate, trailer fee, platform fee and other sales commissions during the reconciliation, calculations processes and reduce administrative burden around distribution agreements and counterparty due diligence, the firm said in a statement.

During the past six months, FE fundinfo has partnered with a variety of asset managers to develop this service within a pilot project in order to obtain a good understanding of the business requirements from several asset managers with different fund ranges, distribution jurisdictions and specific operation processes.

As a result, FE fundinfo has been able to refine the value proposition and develop a modular and customisable fee and distribution channel management service which will support asset managers by providing operational efficiency at a lower cost through economies of scale.

The new Fee and Distribution Channel management will become another arm of FE fundinfo’s Fund Information Hub. Through the acquisition of Adjuto, FE Fundinfo has the systems in place to support asset managers with many of their middle-office admin burdens through an end-to-end solution which provides strong fund distribution oversight at lower cost due to standardisation, digitalisation and automation.

FE fundinfo says that its service will increase transparency and compliance with regulatory requirements while saving asset managers’ time and resources through support functions provided by a dedicated team of experts.