Sasfin Asset Managers has been acknowledged as Best Moderate Allocation Fund for a second year in a row for the returns delivered by the Sasfin BCI Balanced Fund, at the Morningstar South Africa Fund Awards 2021. This follows the team’s recent win at The Raging Bull Awards for the Sasfin BCI Flexible Income Fund.
Arno Lawrenz, the highly experienced and award-winning Chief Investment Officer, explains, “This year, the fact that we have been nominated for two different awards and won for each of the funds shows the depth of expertise and capability as a multi-asset solution provider. These funds require a blend of expertise across asset classes, and it points to the depth of resources across the equity and fixed income space.”
Lawrenz took the helm of Sasfin Asset Managers at the end of 2020. “I feel integrated into the business already. The first few months have been amazing in terms of client and team engagement and I have seen the level of experience this team has which is now being rewarded by the industry with these wins. 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.”
Robust process
“The fund combines practical asset allocation decision-making with a deliberate risk-conscious mindset, and we are therefore quite pleased to see that the fund has been awarded not only on performance but also on its risk awareness. The award recognises risk and performance over various time frames which speaks to the funds’ consistency of solid performance delivery but not any cost and without having to assume excess risk,” he adds.
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.
“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 a greater certainty in terms of realising these objectives rather than just allocating based on historic returns.
The fund also employs a multi-strategy approach in that the portfolio construction process incorporates and advocates the use of both indexation and active management, as the belief is that both have a role in achieving client investment objectives in a cost-effective manner,” he says.
Quality and credibility
“The past year has been incredibly unpredictable with difficult markets, unique pandemic challenges and economic uncertainty, all of which have posed serious challenges to even the most sophisticated of investors. Against this backdrop, our winners were still able to deliver solid performance relative to their peers in tough market conditions.” said Tal Nieburg, Managing Director for Morningstar South Africa.
“Most importantly, I think this indicates that Sasfin Asset Managers are on the right track, will continue on an upward curve, and promises a really bright future for us as a team and in terms of our investment capability, ” concludes Lawrenz.
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.
“We believe this combination ensures that the awards are given to funds which have earned strong one-year results and have also shown they have the ability to earn strong long-term returns without undue risk,” added Nieburg
