Hunter Hallhas decided to join the rest of the industry and offer trail commissions on two new products it will take to market in November.
Hunter Hall executive chairman Peter Hall says that Hunter Hall was one of the only remaining fund managers not to offer advisers commission trails when they onsell the funds to their clients.
“We can no longer be out there on our lonesome,” Hall says.
“Our fund is one of the top five best performing fund in Australia, yet our fund flow is much lower than what you’d expect. We’d probably have $1 billion rather than $200 million if we’d been offering trails.”
In November, Hunter Hall will be offering two new funds with trail commissions: the Hunter Hall Global Ethical Trust (GET) and the Hunter Hall Australian Value Trust (AVT). The GET will invest in international equities with the objective of outperforming the MSCI World Accumulation Net Return Index. The AVT will invest in Australian and New Zealand equities and aims to outperform the All Ordinaries Accumulation Index.
Hunter Hall’s flagship, the Value Growth Trust, which has funds under management of more than $200 million, will continue to be offered as a trail-free product, ensuring investors in the fund do not have to experience a rise in fees.
The new trusts will charge management fees of 1.8 per cent per annum and will pay 0.35 per cent per annum trail to advisers. Both trusts will charge a performance fee of 15 per cent of returns in excess of the benchmark.
Hunter Hall is also planning to launch at the same time as the two new trusts, the Ethical Superannuation Fund which will feed into the new funds as well as the Value Growth Trust.
Hall says introducing trails into their new products and starting a superannuation product is part of a drive to become accepted as a mainstream manager.
“We want to be seen more as a mainstream manager. We want to extend the support we provide to ethical investors to those of the wider retail market,” he says.
