Fees:
The Allianz fund has annual manahment charges of 1.80% and ongoing charges (OCF) of 1.84% as of October 2015.
By comparison, the JP Morgan fund has annual managment fees of 1.50% and ongoing charges of 1.67%.
“Both management fee and OCF of the funds are generally in-line with peers, so fees should not be of too much concern in terms of fund selection,” Ng said.
Conclusion
Both funds are strong vehicles for investors to capture long-term growth prospects in Asia-Pacific.
Both products have close to 40% exposure to the Japan market. But Ng said both of the funds are slightly underweight because both of their benchmarks have a 40-45% weighting to Japan. In any case, he does not see the geographic exposure as a risk because Japan’s equity market has been performing better than other developed markets.
The JP Morgan product, he said, would more suitable as a core investment, as the fund’s underlying holdings are mainly diversified in large caps with long-term sustainable growth potential.
On the other hand, the Allianz fund could be used as a satellite investment due to higher stock concentration and a smaller-cap bias.
“The Allianz fund also has flexibility to increase fixed income exposure up to 50%, which could also provide additional downside protection as the fund manager sees fit.”
