Zedra launches new fund for trustees

Thursday 20 September 2018

Zedra has launched a new Jersey-based investment fund, with assets in excess of £250 million, to address what they describe as a gap in the market for an investment solution built for trustees.

Zedra have described their new Fiduciary Investment Fund as "highly innovative" and offering reduced asset manager risk and portfolio volatility.

They say the open-ended fund is suitable for trustees wanting to ensure that trust assets are invested in a safe and secure fashion and benefit from best of breed investment management.

Mike Farley (pictured), Zedra Managing Director, said that the fund's launch was "great news" for both the firm and Jersey. "We developed the Fund because we saw the need for an investment solution built for trustees, which isn’t constrained to one investment manager’s process where you are tied to a specific strategy and style.

"If a trustee has £50 million to invest, you can allocate your financial assets between two or three different investment managers, to reduce manager risk, and still have sufficient assets with each manager to be able to negotiate competitive costs at the manager level. However, this is not so easy if your trust fund has £3 million or less to invest. This is where our new Fiduciary Investment Fund comes in: it allows trustees to reduce active manager risk and, in turn, portfolio volatility, but also benefits from lower ongoing management charges as the collective assets of the fund are significant."

Pictured: Andy Cunningham, Director of Zedra Fund Services.

Director Andy Cunningham added: "We have already seen a lot of interest in this innovative approach to managing fiduciary assets and anticipate launching a US Dollar version and also opening the fund to other service providers in due course.

"The appointment of individual investment managers today is becoming more and more expensive for trustees and can often be a reason why a trustee will stay with an underperforming manager rather than switch elsewhere – clearly not always the right solution for the trust and its beneficiaries. The Zedra Fiduciary Investment Fund overcomes this dilemma."