St George Bank's funds management arm, Advance Asset Management, has appointed global property trusts CB Richard Ellis and European Investors to its manager line-up and terminated one of its two domestic managers.
The changes were inspired by a desire to ramp up the international exposure of the funds, which were previously completely focused on the domestic property market. They are now 50 per cent exposed to international and 50 per cent exposed to domestic property.
Advance said it had selected CB Richard Ellis because its benchmark-aware approach was likely to be less volatile.
It chose European Investors for its more active, opportunistic style of investing.
The manager said that as a result of the changes, fees on both its properties securities funds would increase from 0.67 per cent to 0.95 per cent.
Advance said the fee increase was due to "an additional level of complexity in managing property securities on a global level".
Before the changes, Advance divided a $391.7 million domestic property mandate evenly between Perennial and Credit Suisse.
The international property dimension is a departure for Advance, which previously only invested through domestic listed property trusts.
Ratings agency Standard and Poor's has put the fund's three-star rating on hold as a result.
