S&P downgrades AXA North
Ratings house Standard & Poor's has pointed to the differences in the AXA North product set following the platform's acquisition by AMP at the same time as instituting some downgrades.
The S&P analysis, published this week, said that while overall the ratings house continued to believe North offered investors an effective mechanism to help protect wealth by managing downside risk, "since our last review there have been several changes to the features of these products".
Discussing those changes, S&P fund analyst Josh Hall said investor choice had been impacted.
"In an important change affecting investor choice, the list of available investment options over which protection is available has been reduced significantly and now only contains diversified multi-manager products managed by AMP subsidiary, ipac," Hall's analysis said.
It said that, in addition, the costs associated with the protection mechanism had also increased by between 10 and 45 basis points a year, depending on the risk profile and time frame.
"As a result of this reduced flexibility and increase in cost we have reduced our overall conviction in the North Protected Growth Guarantee, Protected Investment Guarantee and PRG Products," Hall said.
S&P said it had downgraded the North Protected Growth and Protected Investment Guarantee to a rating of "strong" and the North PRG to a "sound" rating.
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