T Rowe Price, a global asset manager with $1.67 trillion in assets under management, has expanded its partnership with UK-headquartered banking group Standard Chartered to offer US mixed asset expertise.

T Rowe Price has just deepened its partnership with Standard Chartered by introducing a new fund for the bank's affluent clients in Singapore and Hong Kong. This will be introduced through the Standard Chartered Funds Variable Capital Company (SC Funds VCC), using T Rowe Price's US mixed asset investment expertise. 

The new fund debuted on 31 January 2025, with T Rowe Price serving as the sub-investment manager, the firm said in a statement. It builds upon T Rowe Price's $95 billion US mixed asset strategy, marking the first time in over a decade that new investors could access this capacity-constrained strategy, and the first time it has become available outside the US. 

The fund is exclusively available to Standard Chartered’s high net worth clients, such as those in the bank’s Priority, Priority Private and Private segments in Singapore, Hong Kong and the UAE. There are plans to expand distribution efforts across other markets. The fund is designed to make equity-like returns with less risk than the S&P 500 Index through active allocation across US equity and fixed income markets. Its portfolio management team is led by David Giroux, the firm said.

“This partnership underscores our shared commitment to providing hard-to-access, custom-curated investment solutions to affluent investors in the region and beyond,” Glen Lee (pictured), head of intermediary distribution for Asia ex-Japan at T Rowe Price, said.

“Our investment team’s contrarian approach, designed to capitalise on long-term mean reversion in markets, asset classes, and sectors, aligns well with Standard Chartered’s advocacy for long-term strategic asset allocation as a foundation portfolio,” he added. 

“Through SC Funds VCC, we want to offer a suite of top-tier, hard-to-access strategies, that are not available in other financial institutions across our footprint,” Sumeet Bhambri, global head, advisory and managed investments, wealth solutions, Standard Chartered, continued.

T Rowe Price and Standard Chartered formed their first partnership in January 2021 to make two T Rowe Price SICAV sub-funds available to Hong Kong retail investors through Standard Chartered. Since then, the firms have expanded the partnership to Singapore by introducing three T Rowe Price funds to Standard Chartered Singapore retail clients in May 2022.