Ian Hart, the managing partner of Unbiased Financial Group, has launched a multi-asset bond fund for clients and other advisers using his personal pension as seed capital.
Mr Hart, who already runs wealth management and model portfolio service (MPS) products, launched the VT AI Fund, which was back tested to 2002 and invests in what Mr Hart considers to be reliable high yield bond fund managers.
It will also hold cash, the allocation to which will depend on market conditions.
Mr Hart said the need for income for clients prompted him to launch the multi-manager high yield fixed income product.
The fund has an ongoing charge of 0.98 per cent and targets an annual return of between 6 and 9 per cent.
Mr Hart said he paid the cost of the authorised corporate director upfront to keep costs down.
Tom Sparke, investment director at GDIM, a discretionary fund management firm in Cambridge, said: “The high yield space has always been a fertile ground for good risk adjusted returns and this fund looks like it will be able to enhance this further by removing some of the damaging downside risk.
"It is diversified across a number of well-known funds from reliable houses so the specific risk is lower too. I will be interested to see how this fund performs as it looks to be unique.”
Ben Willis, who runs the model portfolio service at Chase De Vere, said: “This appears to be a fantastic product, offering high returns and a strong degree of capital protection, although as always the devil is in the detail.
"The back testing results are impressive, but can’t necessarily be relied upon. We would need to see how the fund performs in real life.
"The projected yield, how much investors will actually receive, may also be less than suggested as short duration bonds are generally trading above par and it is also currently expensive to hedge dollars back into sterling, as they’ll be required to do
"The fund is also quite expensive, which is often one of the downsides for investing in multi-manager funds.”
david.thorpe@ft.com
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