HFA passes $2b with institutional win

HFA Asset Management (HFA) has surpassed $2 billion in assets under management, after being awarded an $88.7 million mandate from Suncorp Life and Superannuation.

The move is Suncorp’s initial investment in HFA’s Diversified Investment Fund, an absolute return international fund of funds product.

“We were looking for some hedge fund exposure and we’re quite familiar with the US side of HFA’s operation, Lighthouse Partners, who have been doing this for many years and have quite an impressive track record. That’s what swayed us,” Suncorp strategic planning manager Kevin Mumford said.

The mandate was awarded to HFA to eliminate exposure to the property market in one of Suncorp’s portfolios and diversify away the risk associated with it.

“We are delighted to be working with Suncorp Life and Superannuation Ltd and their investment advisers Suncorp Investment Management. We have received a great deal of interest in the HFA Diversified Investments Fund from institutional investors wishing to reduce their risk exposure to international equities and bond markets by diversifying away their directional market exposure,” HFA senior investment manager Peter Coates said.

The win is HFA’s third in the institutional investment space in recent times. November 2005 saw Vision Super award the manager a $60 million mandate to its International Shares Fund, closely followed by a decision by Sunsuper to allocate $40 million to HFA’s Diversified Investment Fund.

Mumford felt the mandates awarded to these types of products were set to continue.

“The credibility of the sector is increasing as a whole and it does offer a lot of benefits over traditional asset classes as the correlations to them are low and it offers significant diversification benefits,” he said.