Select secures Snowball as major client

Dealer group to invest in custom fund

By Vishal Teckchandani
Tue 01 Jun 2010

Snowball's clients are expected to move around $200 million to a portfolio made for the firm by Select Asset Management.

Fund manager Select Asset Management has secured listed financial planning firm Snowball Group as the second major client for its customised portfolios business.

As part of the deal, Snowball will transition a part of their client's strategic portfolios to the Select Dynamic Asset Portfolio (SDAP) from other fund managers.

Select chief executive Andrew Fairweather said that he expects Snowball's clients to move around $200 million to SDAP over the next two to three years from existing managers.

SDAP is a concentrated version of the multi-manager and multi-asset Select Growth Portfolio, he said.

"It's a very concentrated version of our growth portfolio but there are a number of key differences," Fairweather said.

SDAP has a 0-100 per cent asset allocation range for major asset classes including equities, fixed interest, property and infrastructure and 0-35 per cent for alternatives.

The portfolio may hold anywhere between five to 30 investments.

"Generally, this portfolio will favour lower cost and more liquid investment vehicles such as exchange-traded funds and index funds in addition to actively managed funds," Fairweather said.

The fund manager's first client for its customised portfolios unit was private wealth firm Finovia.

Select is aiming to secure four to six mandates from dealer groups over the next five years for its customised portfolios business.

Earlier in the month, Snowball called on its core fund managers to remove opaqueness around managed funds in a bid to create greater clarity for clients, the group's managing director Tony McDonald said.

The move was prompted by the findings of InvestmentTrends research recently commissioned by Snowball, he said.

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