St George prefers new partners
Geoff Lloyd
St George Bank’s wealth management division Asgard Wealth Solutions has removed one fund manager from its preferred partners program and added two new managers.
Principal Global Investors has been removed from the manager line-up while Goldman Sachs JBWere (GSJBW) and Zurich Financial Services have been added, according to St George executive for wealth and Asgard wealth solutions chief executive Geoff Lloyd.
The changes bring the total number of fund managers in the St George program to 12, one more than the 11 that formed the original line up at its controversial inception one year ago, he told Money Management.
In addition, the inclusion of GSJBW and Zurich has also added three new funds to the program, while Principal’s two participating funds have been removed — although these remain on the broader 400-fund Asgard platform menu.
GSJBW’s Australian Infrastructure Fund and the GSJBW Global Flex Fund, as well as the Zurich Equity Income Fund, have been added to the 30-fund partners program.
Principal’s Global Property Securities Fund and its Global Strategic Income Fund have come off the program following the completion of a review last week.
Lloyd said the decision to remove Principal was “no reflection” on the manager, but “rather a result of the qualitative and quantitative criteria attached to partner selection”.
“The support it received was quite good in terms of fund flows, but we really had to compare its ability to get the distribution momentum with what we were hearing from within our network of advisers.
“They were telling us about the need to bring on broader managers that have greater distribution capability, and we have responded to that in the review.”
In turn, GSJBW and Zurich were selected for the “strong demand they have within the adviser networks as well as their distribution performance and their research ratings”, Lloyd said.
Commenting on the program’s first-year performance, he said the “segmented service our preferred partners have been giving our adviser networks has been quite beneficial to them”.
The program comprises about 10 per cent of the total funds under management on the Asgard platform of “just a bit under $50 billion, subject to today’s equity markets”.
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