Funds
Our funds combine some of SA’s top asset managers, to ensure your staff are well looked after during retirement.
- Strategic Asset Allocation Range
- Absolute Return Range
- Flexible Asset Allocation
- Specialist Funds
- Fund of Hedge Funds
- ForLife
Fund |
Report |
Fund Description |
Long-Term Target |
Benchmark |
Chart |
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Aggressive Fund |
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This Fund is aimed at investors who seek to maximise long-term growth and are not concerned about short-term fluctuations in capital values. Investors should thus be aware of the possibility of capital losses resulting from the Fund's significant exposure to equities. This Fund is suitable for retirement funds and complies with Regulation 28 of the Pension Funds Act. |
The Fund seeks to out-perform its composite benchmark. |
Basket of market indices, weighted by the Fund's strategic asset allocation. |
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Balanced Fund |
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This Fund is aimed at investors who seek to achieve average long-term growth in excess of inflation and are not overly concerned about short-term fluctuations in capital values. The long term expected return will be lower than that of the Aggressive Fund but higher than that of the Conservative Fund. This fund is suitable for retirement funds and complies with Regulation 28 of the Pension Funds Act. |
The Fund seeks to out-perform its composite benchmark. |
Basket of market indices, weighted by the Fund's strategic asset allocation. |
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Conservative Fund |
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This Fund is aimed at investors who seek to achieve moderate long-term capital appreciation but are also concerned about short-term fluctuations in capital values. The investor requirement of short-term capital preservation is managed through a reduced exposure to equities. This fund is suitable for retirement funds and complies with Regulation 28 of the Pension Funds Act. |
The Fund seeks to out-perform its composite benchmark. |
Basket of market indices, weighted by the Fund's strategic asset allocation. |
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Fund |
Report |
Fund Description |
Long-Term Target |
Chart |
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Absolute Balanced Fund
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This is an asset allocation Fund aimed at long-term capital growth. A flexible mandate is employed not for maximum performance but to allow the portfolio to be biased towards absolute returns and capital preservation. This Fund is suitable for retirement funds and complies with Regulation 28 of the Pension Funds Act. |
Inflation +7% p.a. over rolling 3 years with no negative returns over rolling 18 months (before fees). |
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Absolute Defensive Fund
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This Fund is an asset allocation fund aimed at medium-term
capital stability coupled with long-term capital growth. A flexible
mandate is employed not for maximum performance but to allow the
portfolio to be biased towards absolute returns and capital
preservation. Over longer periods the Fund will attempt to produce
significant inflation-beating returns. |
Inflation +5% p.a. over rolling 3 years with no negative returns over rolling 12 months (before fees). |
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Absolute Cautious Fund
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This Fund is an asset allocation fund aimed at shorter-term
capital stability coupled with long-term capital growth. A flexible
mandate is employed not for maximum performance but to allow the
portfolio to be biased towards absolute returns and capital
preservation. Over longer periods the Fund will attempt to produce
inflation-beating returns. |
Inflation +3% p.a. over rolling 3 years with no negative returns over rolling 6 months (before fees). |
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Fund |
Report |
Fund Description |
Long-Term Target |
Benchmark |
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Paragon |
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This Fund is a varied asset allocation balanced fund that caters for the needs of trustees who are acutely aware of the risk of their funds underperforming similar retirement funds in the short-term. The Fund aims to be "peer asset allocation neutral" and hence eliminates the asset allocation effect. Paragon uses specialist managers while aiming to mirror the monthly asset allocation of the generalist SYm|mETRY Managed Fund. |
Top quartile performance as measured over rolling 12-month periods against the funds in the merged universe of Alexander Forbes Large Manager Watch (Global) and Multi-Manager Watch (Strategic Asset Allocation, Balanced Category) surveys. |
The Fund is measured against the median return of the managers making up the universe of competing funds. The universe is defined by merging the constituent funds of the Alexander Forbes Large Manager Watch (Global) and Multi-Manager Watch (Strategic Asset Allocation, Balanced Category) surveys. |
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Managed Fund |
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The Fund will seek to provide a truly diversified solution for investors looking for real growth of capital over the long term. The Fund invests across all permissible asset classes including domestic equities, bonds, cash, property and offshore assets. Due to its multi-managed nature the Fund is expected to provide similar returns to the average single-managed balanced fund over time, but with lower volatility. The Fund complies with Regulation 28 of the Pension Funds Act and is thus suitable for retirement fund investors. |
The Fund seeks to out-perform the median of the Alexander Forbes Large Manager Watch (Global) peers over the long term. |
The Fund is measured against the median of Alexander Forbes Large Manager Watch (Global). |
Fund |
Report |
Fund Description |
Long-Term Target |
Benchmark |
Chart |
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Islamic Fund |
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This Fund satisfies the principles of Islamic Law and is suitable for retirement funds and complies with Reg. 28 of the Pension Funds Act. View the Shariah Compliance Certificate |
The Fund has been designed to target an investment return, over the long term, comparable to that of a Balanced Fund. |
A composite benchmark which comprises 50% JSE All Share Index, 15% Dow Jones Islamic Index & 35% STeFI less 0.5% p.a. |
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| Social Impact Fund | |
The Fund is multi-managed and focuses on investing in assets that are deemed to have a positive social impact. It adopts the definition of SRI put forward by the Financial Services Charter which focuses on transformational projects that support social and economic development in under-developed areas and contributes towards equitable access to economic resources. |
This Fund has a long-term performance target of CPI +4% per annum before fees. |
Inflation +4% p.a. |
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Money Market Fund |
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This Fund is aimed at investors who seek to minimise the risk of capital loss over the short-term. |
The Fund seeks to out-perform its benchmark and achieve a long-term expected return of CPI +2% p.a. before asset management fees. |
STeFI. |
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SYm|mETRY offers risk-profiled cash-plus return hedge fund portfolios taking into account our key philosophies. Flexibility of mandates is key to our approach - we therefore also offer bespoke hedge fund solutions that are structured to offer investors a product that matches their risk and return expectations.
Our hedge Funds
We have been managing hedge fund mandates for over six years, and have developed our due diligence process and portfolio management skills in line with the greater SYm|mETRY Multi-Manager business, which has over R40 billion in assets under management. We conduct in-depth due diligence on hedge fund managers using advanced risk and performance systems which govern the entire business - systems that would ordinarily be too costly for ordinary investors to access.
Our hands-on approach of manually monitoring fund managers' underlying stock and sector exposures ensures early warning of unnecessary risks that the managers may be undertaking. This also aids us with mandate compliance in that it will alert us to any positions that the manager is restricted from purchasing. Being part of the greater Old Mutual affords us access to their compliance and legal services, which assist us in performing exceptionally thorough corporate governance and operational due diligence on our underlying managers, both before we invest with them and on an ongoing basis. This is very important in the hedge fund industry, as many of the managers operate within smaller boutiques and not the bigger institutions. Importantly, we structure our products in such a way so as to limit our clients' liability.
By investing in each of the manager's pooled vehicles, we have ensured that each manager's liability is strictly separate from the other manager's liability (or ring-fenced). All of these structures are audited on an annual basis. Hedge funds have been operating in South Africa for well over a decade and have built up total assets to approximately R30 billion. Growth has been predominantly over the last five years, as high net worth private clients and pension funds have been educated on the merits of the strategy. Hedge fund products are not regulated by the FSB, however, there is a strong drive towards looking at such a regulation.
At SYm|mETRY Multi-Manager, our fund of hedge funds' focus is on:
- Giving our clients access to hedge fund products and manager skills which they would ordinarily be unable to access.
- Blending fund of hedge funds with a focus on qualitative (business), quantitative (investment) and corporate governance risks.
- Absolute compounding (not relative to an equity or bond benchmark) with a focus on capital protection.
- Returns from the underlying managers and our fund of hedge funds that are not correlated with traditional markets.
- A properly diversified fund of hedge funds that has lower volatility than traditional asset classes.
- A structure that allows flexibility of mandates and investment objectives in order to meet our clients' unique requirements.
For further details on our hedge fund offering, email Stephen Brierley.
SYm|mETRY continues to expand the boundaries of innovation with regard to life-stage investing with its life-staging solution SYm|mETRY ForLife.
SYm|mETRY Multi-Manager continues to expand the boundaries of innovation with regard to life-stage investing with its life-staging solution SYm|mETRY ForLife. ForLife offers a single investment-for-life that changes as the investment requirements of the member change over his/her lifetime. It offers an investment in which the volatility of investment returns reduce as the member approaches retirement.
But life-staging is not about migrating to cash. It is rather about managing risk. The risk a member faces at retirement will be affected by, amongst others, his post-retirement needs. For example, a member that requires cash at retirement will want to avoid capital loss as his retirement date approaches. A member that requires a guaranteed annuity will want to avoid interest rate risk as his retirement gets nearer.
ForLife caters for investors looking to allocate their retirement savings to:
- Cash: a tax free amount that can be used, for example, to settle a mortgage at retirement.
- A guaranteed annuity: which is used to convert capital into an income for life purchased from a life insurance company.
- A with-profit annuity: which is used to convert capital into an income for life with non-guaranteed increases, that is purchased from a life insurance company.
- A living annuity: where a market-linked investment portfolio is used to provide for ones post-retirement income needs.
Specially designed migration paths (Horizon funds) ensure that as members approach retirement, the risks associated with their post retirement needs are carefully managed.
Download the latest ForLife factsheet.
