Asgard dumps 16 funds

One ofAustralia’s largest master trusts, Asgard, has dumped 16 funds offered by nine different fund managers from its investment menu as part of its latest revamp of the investment platform.

The Sealcorp owned Asgard announced last week that it had removed from the superannuation, allocated pension, investment funds and trustee funds accounts of the master trust, some of the funds managed by Advance, AMP, the Commonwealth, ING, Macquarie, Norwich, the National, State Street and Westpac.

The funds will be replaced by 14 new investment funds in the superannuation account menus of the master trust and by eight in the product menus of its allocated pension, investment fund and trustee fund accounts.

According to Sealcorp’s director of investing and insurance, Caroline Saunders, the significant changes to the master trust menu have been on the agenda for some time.

“We weren’t as current a menu as we could have been,” she says.

Saunders says the most fundamental change is a move away from products offered by balanced managers to those offered by boutique managers.

“Balanced options were not attracting as much money, so they’ve dwindled,” Saunders says. “There is more of a focus on the boutique end.”

Saunders says evidence suggests the potential to add value in the boutique area is quite high, although boutique managers and their products can be more difficult to administer.

The new products to be listed on the mater trusts include those from Advance, Fidelity Perpetual, JB Were, Deutsche Paladin, Rothschild, ABN AMRO, Hunter Hall, IOOF Perennial and Schroder.