Risk, auditing and financial services consulting group RisCura has released the results of its monthly investment performance survey, RisCView, to the end of November 2003. The surveys assess the risk and performance of retirement fund products offered by the largest fund managers in the local South African market.
RisCView comprises eight surveys: Fully Discretionary Global Segregated; Fully Discretionary Global Pooled; Fully Discretionary Domestic Segregated; Fully Discretionary Domestic Pooled; Absolute Return; Money Market/Specialist Cash; Multi-Manager (low, medium, high, all equity); and Socially Responsibility Investment Vehicles (balanced, equity, fixed interest, alternative).
Within the Global Segregated Survey, Allan Gray, Oasis and Foord are the top three funds with the lowest risk and highest returns for the three-year period ending November 2003.
Allan Gray is ranked first on the Average Rank, which indicates that the group has performed consistently well over most time frames from the year 2000 to date. Over three years the group ranked first with returns of 25,48%, over one year it was first with 16,07% and year-to-date it was first at 16,17%.
On the Global Pooled Survey, the top three performing funds over the three-year period are Allan Gray Life Global Balanced, OMAM Profile Pinnacle and RMBAM Optimiser. The returns over the three-year period range from 6,35% to 24,89%.
On the Domestic Segregated Survey, Allan Gray, Oasis and Argon are the top three performing funds on the Average Rank, which indicates that they have performed consistently well from the year 2000 to date. Returns over three years in this category range from 10,32% to 25,09%.
The managers on the Domestic Pooled Survey now have 24 months of data. Over the two-year period ending November 2003, Allan Gray is ranked first followed by African Harvest and then Metropolitan.
For the Absolute Return Products Survey, very few funds have three-year track records. On a one-year basis, the Domestic and Global Absolute Return funds (except for two) continue to outperform their inflation benchmarks. The best-performing Domestic fund over this period is the Nedbank Corporate AM CPIX-Plus Fund managed by Taquanta Asset Managers (previously NIB Quants).
The best-performing Global fund over this period is the SIM CPI +8% Fund.
For the Money Market/ Specialist Cash Survey over the three-year period, Nedbank Treasury has been the top performer, followed by Prescient Cash QuantPlus and Prescient Money Market, ranked second and third respectively. All the portfolios demonstrated similar risk characteristics within a narrow range of 0,2%. The total size of the products on the Specialist Cash Survey stands at R55-billion, the largest of the eight RisCView Surveys.
As for the Multi-Manager Survey, over the three-year period, Sanlam Matrix 50 is the top performer for the low equity category, while Sage Pension Balanced and Sage Pension Growth were first for the medium and high equity categories respectively.
Lastly, on the Socially Responsible Survey African Harvest Balanced Benevolent Fund is the best balanced fund performer over the three-year period, posting a return of 14,84% versus its benchmark of 9,8%.
Within the equity category, the Futuregrowth Albaraka Equity Fund was the top performer over the three-year period with a return of 32,55% and the Futuregrowth Infrastructure Bond Fund was ranked first over the three-year period in the Fixed Interest category, recording a return of 18,73%. — I-Net Bridge