We have designed our investment process to ensure an in-depth understanding of the assets we invest in, ultimately enabling us to deliver consistently superior performance. But how does this work in practice?
Experienced and motivated people
We have taken great time and effort to foster a supportive team culture in order to attract and retain the best talent available. As a result, we have an established investment team that is widely regarded as one of the strongest and most experienced in the industry.
Researching and choosing the best assets
Research is the most important and fundamental element of the investment process and is the cornerstone on which we base our investment decisions. Our fund managers select the securities that we want to hold based on thorough investigation of the asset in question. Rather than rely on freely available market research, we conduct our own fundamental research. For example, when selecting equities we disregard the short-term sentiments of the market to examine the prospects for a company over a five-year time horizon. By basing decisions on our own criteria, rather than those of external analysts, we are able to take informed independent decisions.
Working as a team
We adopt a team approach to analysing investments, with all fund managers conducting research. Ultimately, a senior fund manager is responsible for deciding which asset we hold in a fund but they will base their decision on the analysts’ recommendations.
To ensure that the investments held are the best available, we set our asset-specific opinions against our macro-economic view. We formulate this using research carried out by our global strategy team as well as from the insights, knowledge and experience within the investment teams.
All of this research produces a phenomenal amount of information. To accommodate this we developed our own in-house electronic research portal. This helps to ensure that the research carried out is sufficiently rigorous, allowing us to share findings and investment ideas across all investment teams.
As a result of this process, our fund managers have the knowledge required to buy and hold those assets that offer the opportunity for outperformance over the long term.
While we use the same general process for all asset classes, there are some vital differences in our approach to equities, bonds and property.