Look to contributory mortgages for income
Investors will need to up their ante in the hunt for other income sources outside of their familiar grounds, after the Reserve Bank dropped interest rates to an all-time low, Australian Unity Investments said.
Australian Unity Investments head of mortgages, Roy Prasad, said investors would need to invest four times as much in a term deposit, to earn the same amount of interest, as they did before the global financial crisis.
But for some investors, contributory mortgages were filling the income gap, as they provided higher levels of income, without the need to take on additional risk, he said.
Under a contributory structure, investors could select individual mortgage loans over commercial properties or create a portfolio of investments that suited their risk and return requirements, Prasad said.
Investment in commercial mortgages offered a number of advantages to investors, such a low volatility, higher returns than other floating-rate investments, low levels of loss and low correlations to other assets classes.
Investors could also select the term of their investment, up to a maximum of two years, or roll over into a new contributory mortgage opportunity after the term expired, Prasad said.
Recommended for you
Outflows from an Australian private markets fund manager have caused FUM at Pacific Current to decline by $1 billion in the last quarter.
Former RIAA chief executive Simon O’Connor has joined the ethical advisory panel at U Ethical Investors.
Financial services leaders are “all cashed up with nowhere to grow” when it comes to M&A activity, according to Deloitte, with 90 per cent saying they have strong balance sheets ready for an acquisition.
As fund managers are urged to diversify their product ranges, they are finding a faster way to do this is via an acquisition of existing firms but experts say it is not without potential culture clashes.