St James’s Place has handed the management of its £4.6bn Strategic Managed fund over to Royal London Asset Management.
The mandate is being passed on from Columbia Threadneedle, who has managed the multi-asset fund since 2014.
SJP Strategic Managed is up 72.7% since Columbia Threadneedle took charge, beating one of its benchmarks, Bloomberg Multiverse, by 36 percentage points but underperforming the second, MSCI ACWI, by 168.6 percentage points. It invests 30% of its assets in the former index and 70% in the latter.
Royal London will maintain the same strategy of holding at least 60% in equities, targeting low active risk strategies with the aim of minimising tracking errors.
See also: Royal London says advisers delivering better value than last year
Nevertheless, the new manager will have the freedom to invest in a range of asset classes at its own discretion.
St James’s Place said the fund will offer “a lower cost than is typically associated with active management”. It currently has an ongoing charges figure of 1.5%.
The firm’s chief investment officer, Justin Onuekwusi, said: “We are committed to continuously improving our funds to ensure they deliver the best value for clients. The change increases the choice available to our investors – accessing different types of strategies across our multi-asset range of funds.
“The disaggregation of platform and advice charges from our funds later in the year will mean that our investment proposition will be priced on a like-for-like basis and be extremely competitive versus other funds in the market.”
See also: St James’s Place sees £4.3bn of net inflows amid ‘successful year’
Royal London Asset Management’s chief client officer Ed Venner added: “We look forward to partnering with SJP to deliver compelling investment outcomes for their clients.
“We are proud that SJP recognise and value our ability to tailor multi-asset solutions to their specific needs by combining our first-class active investment capabilities with our commitment to client service.”
This story was written by our sister title, Portfolio Adviser
