engage Mutual Funds make positive progress at first anniversary

February saw the first anniversary of the launch of two new Life funds, made available to investors through the Progressive Bond from engage Mutual Assurance.

These Funds have delivered strong performance over the past year despite recent market volatility, in comparison with some of their better known peers.

2007 was a difficult year for cautious investors, and many ‘household name’ funds experienced a mixture of results with negative returns in some cases whilst the engage Diversified Growth Fund had a strong inaugural year, with a return of 4.2% compared with the performance of the IMA Cautious Managed sector median of -3.83%. The engage Diversified Protector Fund also delivered an above average return of 3.6%, with the CPPI based Fund providing investors with a further layer of risk protection against volatile markets.

The engage Funds both invest in the Diversified Target Return Fund managed by Insight Investment which uses a UCITS III ‘fund of funds’ structure and unique risk management techniques to meet its objective of producing equity equivalent returns, defined as cash +4%, with a risk profile more akin to a global investment grade bond. The funds take advantage of a wide spread of asset classes including fixed income, cash, near cash and deposits, equities, property, currency, commodities and structured products, across all regions, to spread risk and provide consistent returns in all conditions.

With a lower than average equity holding within the underlying Insight Diversified Target Return Fund, investors in the Progressive Bond can be confident that the aim of the investment is to increase the value over the medium to long term and seeks to match average long-term stock market returns with far less risk exposure compared to more equity biased funds

Duncan Hardie, Intermediary Marketing Manager at engage Mutual Assurance said: “As a modern mutual we have been eager to provide Advisers with straightforward and accessible long term investment products for investors who still want good potential returns but without all of the risk normally associated with equities. To date these Funds have done exactly what it says on the tin. In the current volatile market conditions the engage funds benefit from the underlying funds’ flexibility in comparison to more traditional types of investment and, as well as outstripping more established names in the industry in what has been a difficult year for the markets, with an annualised volatility of just 4.1% they have satisfied the cautious clients need for safer investment performance.”