ASSET ALLOCATOR OF THE YEAR  

WINNER

- Legg Mason Diversified Trust  

FINALISTS

- BT Future Goals Fund  

- UBS Balanced Investment Fund    

Taking a small business approach to managing large diversified allocations is something that separates Legg Mason from the crowd, its chief investment officer (CIO) believes.   

In a space dominated by multi-manager diversified funds, Legg Mason believes its single-manager “personal touch” option is one of the key differentiators that scored it a nomination and later the title of Asset Allocator of the Year.   

The Australian arm of the global investment management firm opts for tailored allocation solutions where possible instead of “off-the-shelf solutions”, CIO Reece Birtles said.   

“We’re very happy to work with individual clients in working out their asset allocation,” Birtles said. “The nature of a typical diversified fund is it has a set 70/30 (growth assets/defensive) mix, but each family’s situation and personal wealth does change what their required asset allocation is.”  

For the BT Future Goals Fund, another finalist in the group, 2013-14 brought similar successes, due to getting strategic asset allocation right and meeting consistency targets, its head of diversified strategies, Martyn Wild, said.   

“When we build our portfolios, we’re really looking to minimise the volatility in the portfolios as far as we can while still delivering on the investment return. We’re effectively saying what’s the minimum risk we can expose these assets to whilst delivering the return, whereas the common approach is to maximise the return for a given level of risk,” he said.   

The UBS Balanced Investment Fund, the other finalist, credits its global catalogue of ideas and strategies for its performance in the last year.   

“Each portfolio is built from the ground up using these ideas according to the specifications for each particular fund,” UBS head of investment strategy Tracey McNaughton, said. “The implication here is that we don’t really have a head office - our idea generation is truly global but implementation is local.”