Sasfin’s wins again at the Morningstar Fund Awards 2022

The Sasfin BCI Stable Fund is a cautious managed portfolio with the investment objective to achieve above real inflation-beating total returns by way of delivering relatively high income with a measure of capital growth over the medium to long term. The Fund achieved 19.73% in the last year.

Shear explains, “This is a fund designed for the cautious investor who does not want to risk losing hard-earned savings but also wants the value of his or her portfolio to grow ahead of inflation. The portfolio holds a core of fixed-income assets that produce a stable income, including high-quality bonds which pay out inflation plus.”

Arno Lawrenz, Sasfin’s Chief Investment Officer, explains, “Importantly, longer-term investors like pension funds want to know about the sustainability of performance, which means they want to know it is repeatable, and this directly speaks to consistency and expertise that these wins point to.”

“Our Wealth division is consistently illustrating the benefits of pioneering local and global solutions with strong governance, cementing us as the highly credible wealth and investment partner of choice in South Africa,” adds Erol Zeki, CEO of Sasfin Wealth.

“We have refined an integrated approach to help clients grow their wealth and create a legacy, especially with respect to whatever wealth may mean to them. With this in mind, we endeavour to really listen to our clients as the landscape shifts. We have been able to deliver on this within the context of the local financial service sector becoming significantly more complex, with most affluent South Africans applying a global lens when looking at their wealth requirements,” he adds.

“Our size is a sweet spot in our industry, and we have made it our purpose to advise our clients through care, knowledge and expertise on their journey to financial wellbeing. This is achieved through our commitment to building personal, meaningful and lasting relationships of trust.”

In order to achieve the fund’s objectives, the investments acquired for the portfolio included listed property-related securities, equity securities, preference shares, non-equity securities, fixed interest instruments (including, but not limited to, bonds, corporate bonds, inflation-linked bonds, convertible bonds, cash deposits and money market instruments) and assets in liquid form. To provide a level of capital protection, the portfolio’s equity exposure is limited to 40% of the portfolio’s net asset value.

Robust process
Sasfin Asset Managers’ investment philosophy is fostered around pillars such as identifying global macroeconomic themes, appropriate asset allocation, managing risk and controlling costs, where the belief is that these are some of the “core drivers” necessary to achieve sustainable, compounding returns over the long term. Sasfin is a well-known and established brand, but remains small enough to approach its clients with a bespoke and personal touch.

“We believe that the biggest risk to a client is not meeting their intended long-term objective and therefore capital is deployed such that there is greater certainty in terms of realising these objectives rather than just allocating based on historic returns. It’s been a great year for the fund,” concludes Shear.

Methodology
The awards methodology emphasises the one-year period, but funds must also have delivered strong three-and five-year returns after adjusting for risk within the awards peer groups in order to obtain an award. Further, they must have been at least in the top half of their respective peer groups in at least three of the past five calendar years.