Legal & General Investment Management has merged away its Future World Gender in Leadership UK Index fund, known widely as the Girl fund, after it failed to attract money from investors.
Championed by the then head of personal investing at the group Helena Morrissey (pictured), LGIM launched the Girl fund in 2018 with the aim of raising gender diversity standards in companies across the UK equity market.
The group created a proprietary index for the fund to score and rank companies according to four gender diversity measures: women on the board of directors, women executives, women in management, and women in the workforce.
However, the fund has seen assets dwindle over the past six months, dropping from around £50m – which it appeared to have under management since launch – to £6m on 31 July 2020, according to FE Analytics.
Girl fund fails to see ‘level of inflows originally expected’
The group recently decided to merge the fund into the Legal & General Future World ESG UK Index Fund, subject to customer vote, as it did not see the level of inflows previously anticipated.
See also: Advisers mixed on Helena Morrissey’s Girl fund
A statement from LGIM said: “At LGIM we continually review our fund range as part of our commitment to offering solutions that meet the needs of our investors. Following a recent assessment and providing unitholders’ consent is received, the Legal & General Future World Gender in Leadership UK Index fund (Future World GIRL Fund) will merge into the Legal & General Future World ESG UK Index fund on 26 February 2021.
“LGIM has long been a champion of diversity and inclusion and we take the issue of gender equality and the importance of diversity very seriously, both in our own organisation and in the companies we invest in. While we were very proud of what the Future World Girl fund has achieved, including the awareness that it generated around a very important topic, this fund and thematic strategy did not see the level of investor inflows originally expected.
“The Future World ESG UK Index fund includes a wider number of ESG indicators including environmental and governance factors, as well as gender diversity. We believe that given these similarities, the decision to merge the assets of the Future World GIRL will be most beneficial for unitholders.”
News of the Girl fund’s fate comes shortly after LGIM made sweeping changes to the L&G Ethical Trust. The £290.6m fund was rebadged as the Legal & General MSCI World Socially Responsible Investment Index fund after it switched from a UK to a global mandate.
Interactive Investor dumped the tracker fund from its ethical buy list following the change.
