ING Australia has signed an external distribution agreement with AMP for its latest capital protected fund.
The agreement means the new fund ING Harvest Fund is live on AMP’s Flexible Lifetime platform.
“It’s a complementary distribution channel for us, in [the fund] is on OneAnswer and we’ve got certain relationships with advisers in certain channels like ANZ, and also in the open market,” ING Australia head of product and strategy and personal investments David Kan said.
“AMP flexible lifetime platform is a major platform for that group and so it opens up new distribution pathways.
“I’m not surprised that we’ve been approached. In fact we’ve been approached by others, the key about AMP is that it’s complementary to our existing channels rather than being in competition with, so it’s an additional opportunity.”
Kan said the ING Harvest is a wholesale version of the group’s Protected Growth Fund on the OneAnswer platform.
The ING Protected Growth Fund was launched on OneAnswer’s platform in December last year and has daily liquidity and daily unit pricing with capital protection applying from day one.
“There are other capital protected funds on platform but the protection you have to wait several years to kick in,” Kan said.
“And alternatively there are capital protected funds off platform where they don’t have daily liquidity or unit pricing; they’re closed in subscription type products. So this is the first to market.”
Kan said the underlining fund is the ING Managed Growth Fund, which has 85 per cent capital protection which is rising.
