Evolutionary Awards 2025 – Mergence: most promising women-led initiative

Category: Most promising women-led initiative

Describe your evolution:

The Mergence Global Equity Quant Fund, led by Fazila Manjoo, Portfolio Manager at Mergence Investment Managers, represents a significant evolution in the South African asset management landscape – both in terms of product innovation and inclusive leadership.

Launched in 2023 under a South African Actively Managed Certificate (AMC) structure, the fund is one of the first of its kind in the local market. Its emergence reflects a broader shift toward modern, efficient investment vehicles that meet the dual demand for global exposure and cost efficiency.

Fazila, a seasoned investment professional with over 20 years of experience, identified a gap in the market: pension funds and retail investors were looking for global diversification but lacked access to a simple, cost-effective solution. Traditional collective investment schemes or offshore structures often posed barriers in terms of fees, access, and agility. The AMC structure, widely used internationally but underutilised locally, offered a compelling answer. AMCs allow for the efficient implementation of institutional-grade investment strategies without the regulatory and administrative burdens of traditional fund structures. They offer speed to market, transparency, and cost-effectiveness, attributes well-aligned with the fast-moving nature of a quantitative strategy.

The Global Equity Quant Fund applies a rules-based, factor-driven investment process to identify a diversified portfolio of global equities. The investment approach is designed to reduce behavioural biases, enhance risk management, and deliver consistent long-term returns through disciplined factor exposure, such as value, quality, and sentiment.

While quantitative investing is not new globally, it remains relatively underutilised in the South African market, where active discretionary or index-based approaches dominate. This evolution, combining quantitative investing with the innovative AMC format, creates a powerful value proposition: global reach, systematic discipline and operational efficiency. It also reflects Fazila’s ability to straddle both deep technical expertise and strategic vision.

Importantly, Fazila’s leadership in launching this fund adds another layer of significance. As one of the few women leading a quantitative investment strategy in South Africa, her presence helps challenge entrenched norms in a male-dominated segment of the industry. Her approach blends rigour and accessibility. She is as passionate about educating trustees on quantitative investing as she is about refining models and risk metrics.

The fund’s launch was supported by Mergence Investment Managers, a firm known for its values-driven, entrepreneurial approach. This partnership has allowed the fund to benefit from an institutional-quality investment platform, while also retaining the agility that AMCs offer.

The fund’s evolution is not just about product innovation, it is also about access. By offering a global strategy through a locally administered structure, the fund lowers the barriers to global investing for South African institutions and intermediaries. It brings global equity investing into the local investment conversation—not as an add-on, but as an integral part of a well-diversified portfolio.

The strategy for the Mergence Global Quant Equity Portfolio was implemented from 1 January 2024; the fund outperformed the MSCI World index benchmark by 5.5% in 2024 and has outperformed the same benchmark by 3.5% since inception to the end of July 2025. Please see the performance summary in the uploaded fund factsheet, showing to end April 2025 annualised growth of 17,12% since inception.

Today, the fund is gaining traction among forward-looking allocators who are seeking uncorrelated returns, global diversification and evidence-based strategies that can weather market cycles.

In summary, the Mergence Global Equity Quant Fund represents evolution on several fronts:

• Product innovation through the AMC vehicle
• Process evolution via a disciplined, factor-based quantitative strategy
• Access and inclusion, by lowering entry barriers to global investing
• Leadership diversity, with Fazila breaking ground in a niche dominated by male-led strategies
• Strong performance to date.

This multi-dimensional evolution positions the fund as a strong contender in a new era of investing – one that is data-driven, globally connected and increasingly inclusive.

Describe the impact your evolution has had in response to its identified challenges and targeted outcomes.

The Mergence Global Equity Quant Fund was developed in response to three intersecting challenges in the South African investment environment:

1. A need for global equity diversification among local pension funds
2. Limited access to systematic, cost-efficient investment strategies in global markets
3. The ongoing underrepresentation of women in leadership roles – particularly in quantitative portfolio management.

While the fund is still in its early stages, it has already begun to make an impact in three key areas: market engagement, education and industry visibility.

First, the fund has generated positive interest from asset consultants and institutional investors, with several productive engagements taking place. These conversations confirm a growing appetite for global diversification, and an openness to newer structures such as the Actively Managed Certificate (AMC). By showcasing the AMC as a credible, cost-effective alternative to traditional fund formats, the product is helping shift perceptions and expand the toolkit available to local allocators.

Second, the strategy is prompting valuable conversations around evidence-based investing. As a rules-based, factor-driven fund, it offers investors an opportunity to engage with global equity investing from a more systematic and transparent perspective – something that remains relatively underutilised in the South African market. Early feedback indicates that stakeholders appreciate the clarity and discipline of the approach and see its potential to complement existing portfolios.

Third, and importantly, the fund is contributing to industry transformation through leadership. Fazila Manjoo’s position as the fund’s lead portfolio manager challenges conventional norms around who leads technical, globally oriented strategies. Her presence and visibility in this space not only brings diverse perspective to investment thinking, but also sends a powerful signal to the industry and to young professionals that women can thrive at the forefront of quantitative investing.

The fund’s evolution also resonates with broader market developments. As regulatory shifts and macroeconomic uncertainty prompt pension funds to rethink their traditional allocations, there is growing recognition of the need to diversify both geographically and by strategy. The Mergence Global Equity Quant Fund, offering access to global equities via a flexible and efficient AMC structure, aligns well with this shift, even as it waits to secure its first allocations. In summary, while the fund is still gaining momentum to gather assets, it is already influencing conversations and expanding horizons.

It is:

• Making global equity strategies more accessible to South African investors
• Showcasing the AMC structure as a flexible, investor-friendly solution
• Contributing to greater inclusion and representation in investment leadership.

As the industry continues to evolve, the foundations laid by this fund, both technically and symbolically, position it well for future success and broader systemic impact.

Supporting Documentation >