Multi Asset

Royal London’s Multi Asset Fund range offers diversified investments intended to perform in the longer run through changing economic conditions.

In the years since the Global Financial Crisis, investors have come to value the benefits of diversification. A multi asset fund – investing across bonds, equities and other assets – is designed to offer protection from the downside, but also have the potential for growth. It can be a less volatile investment that aims to perform more steadily.

By creating funds that are global, well-diversified and actively managed, we have made multi asset investing straightforward. Once only the preserve of the very wealthy, a fully diversified portfolio is now easily accessible, thanks to modern investing technology.

Royal London Asset Management's multi asset funds typically hold 10-15 underlying funds. This translates to 300-400 different bond issuers and thousands of equities and other asset classes, such as property and commodities. This gives investors a huge diversification benefit.

The funds are available in a range that spans the conservative to more adventurous appetites. We believe they offer sophisticated strategic and tactical asset allocation at a very affordable price.

Our approach

The investment process used by the team focuses on tactical asset allocation as a key driver of returns. A systematic framework is used to aid decision making. A central part of this is the Investment Clock, a proprietary quantitative model tracking growth and inflation trends and the performance of various investments. The Clock is the product of over 20 years of research, aiming to maximise exposure to investments which perform well at different stages of the economic cycle.

As active managers, we adjust our asset allocation according to our modelling and economic forecasts.

The portfolios blend growth-focused asset classes such as UK and overseas equities, commercial property, and commodities, with less volatile assets such as fixed income and cash.

Each asset class must make sense over the long run, but will offer its best performance at different points in the economic cycle. This helps to steady the overall returns of the funds. Assets that provide resilience to shocks, such as gilts and commodities, are included. But assets considered exotic or too expensive are not.

Risk and governance

The funds are monitored against their respective benchmarks to ensure positions remain within an expected range. In addition, a risk committee will monitor and oversee the funds on an ongoing basis. While the team retain full responsibility for all investment decisions, this ensures they are managed in a disciplined, repeatable manner.