MLC has expanded its MasterKey investment platform to offer a portfolio management system to independent financial advisers.
The portfolio management system, called the MLC MasterKey Horizon Series, contains six portfolios which cover a spectrum of client risk profiles and return objectives.
Each of the portfolios has built in diversification across asset classes, markets regions and investment styles. Five of the portfolios are pre-existing manager of manager funds while the sixth fund is a newly added conservative growth portfolio.
The six portfolios have been designed to cover the range of client risk profiles and objectives with portfolios being composed of 75 per cent bonds and 25 per cent cash through to 100 per cent equity.
MLC has signed 19 mandates with Australian and international fund managers including Fidelity, Credit Suisse, Perpetual, State Street, and National Asset Management to provide different levels of diversification for each portfolio.
MLC Investment Management general manager, Chris Condon, says the corresponding investment styles of the many different managers in the Horizon Portfolio Series is what delivers consistently superior long-term investment returns.
“We give each manager a mandate to play to their strengths and find the best investment opportunities, then manage and rebalance the managers in a way that reduces bias to any one investment style,” Condon says.
He says through the system independent advisers can access a data warehouse where real-time stock information is stored on the 19 funds. More than 7000 stocks are monitored daily under the system.
The system, devised by the group a few years ago, is considered to be the next step in the evolution of financial planning.
MLC adviser solutions general manager Dale Holmes says advisers have been taking on too many functions of the business. Holmes believes advisers need to stop being portfolio managers to clients and start communicating the portfolio information to clients.
“In order for financial planners to communicate portfolios to clients you firstly need to standardise portfolio solutions. In the past the industry has done this backwards,” he says.
