Leading UK fund reports huge growth in interest from investors for retail products

News - Funds

Written by Ray Clancy

Wednesday, 25 August 2010 10:22

Investors are displaying an increasing appetite for financial retail products with a leading fund manager revealing that sales are soaring.

Standard Life Investments said that investors are recognising the benefits of investing in a range of funds and it has seen demand soar with investors committing £1.46 billion gross into its range of mutual funds during the first six months of 2010.

In total, this represents an average of £11.3 million gross invested for every working day between 1 January and 30 June 2010. It also represents a 96% increase in the gross funds, £744 million, invested during the same period last year and a 128% increase on net sales of £312.6 million.

The five top selling funds (gross) over the first six months of 2010 were the Global Absolute Return Strategies (GARS), Global Index Linked Bond, UK Smaller Companies, UK Equity High Income and Select Property funds. The five top selling funds for the same period last year (gross) were the UK Equity High Income, GARS, AAA Income, Global Index Linked and Corporate Bond funds.

‘Investors are increasingly recognising the benefits of investing in our range of mutual funds. Interestingly our GARS Fund has been the main contributor to improving sales during the first six months of 2010 with sales of £616 million accounting for 42% of our total gross sales,’ said Jacqueline Kerr, head of UK Wholesale at Standard Life Investments.

‘This boosted our market share of gross sales in the Absolute Return sector as a whole from 8.5% in 2009 to 25.5% in 2010. The fund has produced a competitive absolute return of 8.74% per annum over the last three years with a volatility level of 7.3%,’ she added.

‘In addition to this and as at the week commencing 19 July, the total gross sales from the UK retail market into GARS since its launch in May 2008 went through the £1 billion barrier, a success I believe is in no small part due to our delivering training days to over 600 intermediaries during the first half of the year,’ she explained.

‘We have been able to deliver these results against a continuing background of volatile and challenging markets which I believe demonstrates the confidence investors have in our investment process and the team based approach adopted by Standard Life Investments. While the remainder of 2010 will continue to be challenging, I firmly believe that we have the performance, products and people to ensure that this strong momentum continues during the remainder of 2010,’ said Kerr.

The strength of Standard Life Investments investment process across its range of OEICs is further reflected by the fact that 23 out of the 29 eligible and actively managed funds are rated ‘A' or above by Standard & Poor’s. Most recently the UK Equity Income Unconstrained and UK Equity Recovery David Cumming funds were awarded A and AA ratings respectively, resulting in the full range of UK Equity funds now boasting Standard & Poor’s ratings.