Sales soar at Standard Life Investments
Leading fund manager, Standard Life Investments has seen appetite for its retail products soar with investors committing £1.46bn gross (£713m net) into its range of mutual funds during the first six months of 2010.
In total, this represents an average of £11.3m gross (£5.5m net) invested for every working day between 1 January and 30 June 2010. It also represents a 96% increase in the gross funds (£744m) invested during the same period last year (128% increase on net sales of £312.6m).
The five top selling funds (gross) over the first six months of 2010 were the Global Absolute Return Strategies (GARS), Global Index Linked Bond, UK Smaller Companies, UK Equity High Income and Select Property funds. The five top selling funds for the same period last year (gross) were the UK Equity High Income, GARS, AAA Income, Global Index Linked and Corporate Bond funds.
Jacqueline Kerr, Head of UK Wholesale, Standard Life Investments, said; "Investors are increasingly recognising the benefits of investing in our range of mutual funds. Interestingly our GARS Fund has been the main contributor to improving sales during the first six months of 2010 with sales of £616m (£571m net), accounting for 42% of our total gross sales. This boosted our market share of gross sales in the Absolute Return sector as a whole from 8.5% in 2009 to 25.5% in 2010. The fund has produced a competitive absolute return of 8.74% per annum over the last three years with a volatility level of 7.3%.
"In addition to this and as at the week commencing 19 July, the total gross sales from the UK retail market into GARS since its launch in May 2008 went through the £1bn barrier - a success I believe is in no small part due to our delivering training days to over 600 intermediaries during the first half of the year - and we thank them for their continued support.
"We have been able to deliver these results against a continuing background of volatile and challenging markets which I believe demonstrates the confidence investors have in our investment process and the team based approach adopted by Standard Life Investments. While the remainder of 2010 will continue to be challenging, I firmly believe that we have the performance, products and people to ensure that this strong momentum continues during the remainder of 2010."