The Emerging Markets Extended Opportunities Fund is benchmarked against the Russell Emerging Extended Index Net, which includes frontier markets and so represents a broader opportunity set across the asset class. This index has returned over 12% since the beginning of 2012.
Each of the third party fund managers focus on a different part of the region and use strategies ranging from quality value and quality growth to thematic growth.
The weighting of the mandates within the fund ranges from 6% to 25% and expected numbers of holdings for each manager falls between 20 and 140.
Scott Crawshaw, Russell portfolio manager, said: "There has been a great deal of change in the world of emerging markets investment over the last few years and clients are looking to further diversify portfolios into less efficient segments of the asset class. This fund deliberately targets these opportunities through specialist managers with the aim to enhance return expectations."
"Choosing the best money managers for a particular product and putting them together in the best way for investors are two of the key levers in our multi-asset solutions. We have launched this fund with an initial line-up of seven managers, two global and five managers selected on the basis of their perceived investment excellence within a specific subset of the asset class, where Russell believes active investment opportunities are high and sustainable."
He said the fund structure would evolve over time as the manager research process unearthed new best-of-breed managers focused on attractive parts of the emerging markets asset class.
Crawshaw and his team of nine are in charge of researching and appointing the managers of the fund.
