Lynda Loxton
SOUTH AFRICAN financial institutions are honing their investment skills in preparation for the lifting of the remaining exchange controls.
More and more are taking advantage of the provision allowing them to invest 10% of their assets offshore by launching innovative funds that enable investors to gain exposure to foreign assets via their normal insurance policies or unit-trust investments.
“Although asset swaps do not represent an ideal mechanism through which South Africans can diversify their savings internationally, they are nonetheless playing a role in enabling some diversification of investments,” says Old Mutual chair Mike Levett.
New products included the Old Mutual’s Worldwide Equity and Worldwide Balanced funds, which had, for the first time in 30 years, given South African investors the opportunity to gain exposure to foreign investments.
In the area of employee benefits, the new International Asset Portfolio has been launched. This is a unitised portfolio consisting of stocks from the Morgan Stanley Capital International World Index and by June this year it had a portfolio of R355- million.
Old Mutual had also launched a Global Equity Fund, which has taken “line honours among international unit trusts, providing a 33,4% return for the year ended June 30 1996”.
But Old Mutual was not only concentrating on markets abroad, Levett said. It was firmly established in Namibia, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Malawi as well and was considering “selective expansion into other markets”.