The Ucits IV-compliant Anti-Benchmark Pacific ex-Japan Equity Fund has been launched with €15m of seed funding from Seven Investment Management. As with the other funds in the range – with €2bn of institutional investor assets under management – this is a quantitatively run proposition and aims to maximise diversification across the region.
Essentially it takes out the traditional reliance on the cap-weighting of indices.
The fund’s stock selection centres on a proprietary diversification ratio process that does not use any predictions of expected future returns. Instead it is designed to produce a portfolio that accesses risk premium evenly from all the independent risk factors available in the market at any given time.
These factors cover geographical, political, sector and other risks.
The fund aims to outperform the MSCI Pacific ex-Japan equity cap-weighted index by between 4% and 6% per year while delivering 30% less volatility.
At launch, this French-domiciled fund is only available to UK investors through retail-investible Seven Investment Management funds as they are not yet on any of the platforms.
The TOBAM Anti-Benchmark strategies that are directly available for direct UK retail include the World Equities and European Equities funds. The Emerging Markets Equity fund will be directly available by the end of June.
