The latest news in investment offerings, financial products and other services relative to wealth advisors and their clients.

Wellington Management
Wellington Management, a US investment house, has formed an exclusive partnership with Standard Chartered Private Bank to offer its Credit Total Return strategy to clients in Singapore and Hong Kong.

Standard Chartered Private Bank’s client base will have access to Wellington’s actively managed long-only cash and bond strategy managed by Connor Fitzgerald from April 2024 onwards. (The fund isn’t registered for sale to retail investors in Singapore and Hong Kong.)

The strategy invests in a global portfolio of dollar-denominated treasury, corporate, high yield, and emerging market fixed income instruments. 

“With interest rates at their highest levels since the [2008] global financial crisis, investors have a renewed appetite for fixed income investing due to the stability of returns and potential income opportunities,” Elizabeth Chisholm (pictured below), head of client group, Asia-Pacific, said. 

Elizabeth Chisholm

RHB Asset Management
RHB Asset Management, a wholly-owned subsidiary of RHB Investment Bank Berhad, has launched what it says is the first Malaysia fund to feed into an actively managed exchange-traded fund.

The RHB Global Equity Premium Income Fund feeds into an ETF, RHB said in a statement. The ETF is the JP Morgan Asset Management’s JP Morgan Global Equity Premium Income UCITS ETF.

The fund presents a “conservative” global equities exposure and aims to generate a regular and higher income stream, capturing both equity dividends and options premiums, RHB said in a statement. 

Actively managed ETFs involve a manager or team deciding on the underlying investments in the fund. Such ETFs often track a benchmark index where managers can change sector allocations, market-time trades, or deviate from the index as they see fit.

“The ETFs market globally has grown by more than 25 per cent since December 2022 to reach a new record of almost $11.5 trillion at the end of 2023. This makes it one of the fastest growing investment products globally,” Mohd Fauzi Bin Mohd Tahir, chief investment officer of equity, RHB Asset Management, said. 

“Investors are always looking to participate in the global equities space, with lower volatility and at the same time offering a consistent high-income stream. Having identified this gap, we have been searching for better investment opportunities for our customers,” he said.  

The fund aims to deliver a 7 to 9 per cent annual income distribution, paid once a month.