Outside fund managers key to BT success

BTFundsManagement will increasingly stake its future success on the performance of outside fund managers, after it launched a series of new multi-manager investment options for its retail client base.

The funds management group has begun offering three multi-manager funds — the Multi-Manager Conservative, Multi-Manager Balanced and Multi-Manager Growth — through its retail-based master trust and wrap accounts, and will extend the distribution of the funds to its retail superannuation products from next month.

BT has teamed up with asset consulting group InTech to offer the funds.

The deal will mean that BT will set the strategic asset allocation parameters for each of the multi-manager funds, but it will be InTech that selects the underlying managers behind the funds.

Under the arrangement, InTech will have free reign in the hiring and firing of all managers and will be under no obligations to include BT as one of the underlying managers.

The launch of the multi-manager series into BT’s retail product range follows the release last year, also with the assistance of InTech, of a similar line of multi-manager funds for the BT’s flagship corporate superannuation product, the BT Lifetime Super Employer Plan.

BT’s head of product Brian Bissaker denies the group’s recent push into multi-manager funds management is in response to its poor run of investment returns, a run now stretching back 18 months.

“Regardless of how good or bad you perform as a single manager, financial advisers keep telling us that multi-manager is where the market is heading,” Bissaker says.