ING Australia has brought the OptiMix global emerging markets shares fund out of the institutional shadows and installed it on the group’s platform, OneAnswer, along with four other additional vehicles.
“It’s available to mums, dads and financial planners,” Emmanuel Calligeris, Optimix chief investment officer, said. The four other funds with a newfound retail exposure are: Goldman Sachs JBWere income plus; Challenger Australian share income; and the AMP Capital responsible investment leaders Australian and international funds. One Answer now holds 75 funds run by 20 different managers. The Optimix emerging markets fund has been running since December 2006. For its underlying managers, the multi-manager draws on the Deutsche Asset Management emerging markets fund, which is run on a wholesale mandate for Optimix; Comgest, a French manager with a Hong Kong office; and the quantitative Panagora emerging markets fund, which Calligeris insisted had not found the information from emerging markets unworkable or sketchy. Calligeris said the Optimix fund invests in 26 emerging markets across the globe, including sub-Saharan Africa, and that good investment opportunities had been found in mid-sized economies and small-to-mid cap markets. The balanced, growth and high growth options in ING’s superannuation offering currently invest in the fund. Meanwhile the manager has recently hired two junior analysts. Christina Yap joined Optimix in September, while Aran Nagendra was hired in September.
The $34 billion Brighter Super is set to shift a significant proportion of equities assets in MySuper from passive to active management. Chief investment officer Mark Rider says the move is possible because of the scale created by mergers, and the fund will be looking to its newly appointed active managers to generate performance through the cycle by taking idiosyncratic risks.
Darcy SongJanuary 21, 2025
