Best Fund Provider Global Bond
Schroders
Best Fund Provider – Global Bond
Zal Devitre
head of private banks & global financial client group, Asia, Schroders
“Schroders is proud to offer a strong range of strategies across fixed income, equities, multi-asset, and alternatives. This breadth of capabilities allows us to be an all-weather partner in wealth management. We pride ourselves on delivering strong client service — both on the ground in Asia and extending to other geographies where partners do business or conduct due diligence.
With over 210 fixed income investment professionals on the ground across Asia, Europe, and the Americas, Schroders’ capabilities in bonds are impressive. Drawing on these resources, we launched the Global Credit family of strategies, which includes Schroder ISF Global Multi Credit and Schroder ISF Global Credit Income. Underpinned by an innovative themes-based approach to credit selection, and designed to achieve the twin objectives of consistent income delivery and drawdown mitigation, the strategies have lived up to their promise, delivered strong performance and resonated with end investors.
Across the fixed income complex, 2019 was a bumper year for investors, who benefitted as yields dropped precipitously. By contrast, the outlook for 2020 is shaping up to be less clear and predictable — not all global bond strategies will weather the environment successfully. Our bottom-up, fundamental framework, underpinned by innovative and forward looking intellectual property, will help us to maintain an edge, even in the most challenging market conditions.”
Winners rationale
An uncertain rate environment in 2019 benefited the more flexible and diversified bond strategies. Exhibiting its strength in providing consistent income and a lower drawdown on capital, Schroders distinguished itself from its global credit peer group in this increasingly challenging environment where generating an attractive yield has become harder than ever before.
In order to deliver a persistent risk-adjusted return, the firm developed a quantitative asset allocation tool which allowed it to flexibly allocate the portfolio without being constrained to any benchmark. This systematic method enabled the asset manager to reduce the drawdown risk of the portfolio by automatically decreasing allocations to countries where the business cycle was deteriorating.
This approach has proven to be highly effective. Since its launch in November 2016, the fund has delivered an annualised return of 6.14% — with a Sharpe ratio of 1.90, as of 30 August 2019. The product also compares favourably to competitors in the global flexible peer group where it has consistently delivered top quartile performance.
A truly global diversified product — free from any inherent regional, sector, or rating biases —has the ability to look for contrarian opportunities. For example, this fund took advantage of the attractive opportunities in European investment grade bonds in early 2019, despite many bearish calls from competitors and sell side analysts.
The fund’s robust investment process was well recognised by its clients. Thanks to a strong inflow from the region’s private banking clients, the fund has surpassed AUM of US$3 billion as it celebrated its third anniversary in November 2019.
Because of its strong inflows and robust fund return performance, in addition to its commitment to private banking clients, Schroder Investment Management is Asian Private Banker’s Best Fund Provider – Global Bond.
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