Investors are hungry for more

Investors are increasingly hunting for new strategies and wanting more for their money, and that is changing the way traditional active equities are managed, according to State Street Global Advisors (SSGA).

Professional investors increasingly wanted to boost their investment performance amid the low return and highly volatile environment, and that was driving the change.

They wanted protection against market shocks at the same time as better returns, SSGA said.

The firm's head of Asia Pacific, Lochiel Crafter, said in the ‘lower-for-longer' environment, investors were motivated to get more for their active fees and wanted downside risk to be managed, while they still participated in rising markets.

SSGA's active quantitative equity team received $1 billion in funds under management over the last two years for their benchmark unaware strategies.

Morningstar also found that less than half of the 333 funds in the Australia large cap equity space outperformed the S&P/ASX 300 over the last year, while only 137 produced a positive result, while 193 funds took on more risk than the market assessed and 40 of those funds outperformed the index.

In the global large blend space, only 49 out of the 199 funds outperformed the index over the year. Of those 199 global funds, 70 took on more risk than the index, and of those, only 12 outperformed, according to Morningstar.