Celebrating 25 years of Alexforbes Investments
Ann Leepile, Chief Executive, Alexforbes Investments
More than two decades ago, a small group of 10 people set out to make accessing the markets simpler, smoother and safer for investors. The company they founded has made a significant impact on the South African investments landscape and continues to pioneer change into the future. As we mark the 25th anniversary of Alexander Forbes Investments Limited and our flagship Performer portfolio, it is a moment to pause and reflect on the heritage of the industry’s leading investments multi-manager.
Serving clients
The investments business was born out of Alexander Forbes Asset Consulting, which provided advisory services to clients on their asset manager selection for their investment funds. The trust earned by providing advisory services ultimately led to trustees increasingly expressing an interest in a platform that allowed them to access our best-researched ideas, efficiently implemented using –top asset managers.
That is how Investment Solutions (IS) was born.
An eye to the future
After realising that there was an opportunity in the market, the team harnessed their expertise and entrepreneurial flair to serve the needs of clients.
Our investment solutions were built using a best-in-class multi-management investment philosophy. Selecting and blending complementary and top-rated asset managers, across different asset classes and styles of money management, into one multi-managed solution was and continues to be fundamental to our clients’ investment success. This approach has weathered many market conditions in the past and has provided consistent, competitive, risk-adjusted investment performance over time.
Performer – an iconic investment solution
The acquisition of Ginsberg, Malan and Carsons by Alexforbes in 1999 resulted in IS merging with Superflex, a multi-management division in the business. This was a move that was aligned with what the business had already started with its own multi-management approach.
This acquisition marked the initial constitution of Performer, also celebrating 25 years since its launch. From being a portfolio that started with just over R27m in assets under management, Performer’s continued reflection of best investment ideas, cost-effectively accessed and blended, has delivered better investment propositions to investors at better value. Today, investors have responded to the winning approach behind Performer by entrusting us with over R170bn of assets through our advisory and multi-managed investment solutions. This is a clear signal of the enormous value placed in Performer’s ability to deliver on their investment success.
Performer, like any other multi-managed solution in our investment suite, is the culmination of our collective knowledge, skill and world-class capabilities recognised across the industry. By deploying different asset classes, investment strategies and asset managers at different times, and in line with our best views, Performer has continuously evolved to remain relevant and responsive to investors’ needs.
A transformative force for good
We have always pursued diversity and inclusion into our way of work and have consistently worked towards achieving a B-BBEE Level 1, ensuring that we actively integrate transformation throughout our business. Beyond this legislative goal – and based on our strongly held belief in the power of diversity – we launched our transformation policy, focusing on both our organisation and the asset management industry at large.
As a natural evolution of our manager research process, our pioneering transformation policy is an extension of our commitment to transformation that sits within our manager research team. The policy ensures that the managers that we engage with understand our transformation ambitions. In this way, we can collectively work to create a more inclusive and competitive investments industry that drives sustainable long-term growth for our clients.
We understand the growing pains that emerging managers can face and believe that it is important to encourage the development of such managers to encourage competition. Through our earliest incubation programmes, we have always supported selected emerging asset managers with their business operations and their investment process.
In line with our ambition of inclusivity and sustainability, our business has been applying responsible investing for over 10 years. We endorsed CRISA and the PRI in 2012 and 2013 respectively before responsible investment was in the mainstream agenda of the industry as we are seeing today. Incorporating ESG considerations into our investment approach has been something that we have implemented and refined over time to ensure that we generate better risk-adjusted returns for investors.
Survival of the fittest
In July 2017 IS officially became Alexander Forbes Investments and is now known as Alexforbes Investments in line with our recent brand change. Alexforbes as a group (which included IS) had previously been successful at delivering advisory services as well as investment management services separately. But the strength now lay in harmonising these capabilities throughout the group, working collaboratively towards making a real and positive impact on people’s lives.
Under the strong and reputable banner of Alexforbes, the business solidified a new opportunity to amplify its impact by:
better serving clients
innovating further in meeting their needs
providing growth for our businesses and career development for our people
Making an impact on people’s lives
Since 1997 the business served as a training ground for investment professionals who have moved on to play significant and influential roles across the broader industry. We acknowledge their contribution to our story and take pride in playing our part in their respective journeys.
While proud of our roots in multi-manager investments, our business model recognises that every client is different. Over the years, we have expanded our product and service offering, leveraging our depth of expertise in these roots. Today, we offer a range of investment management and related investment services across three channels: investment administration, investment advisory and investment multi-manager solutions.
Regardless of how clients choose to work with us, each channel leverages the skills, expertise of our dynamic teams and operational capabilities to successfully implement the solution right for them. Delivering our value proposition through these three core service areas has helped enhance the relevance and value of our business.
Alexforbes Investments wishes to thank our clients and employees who have been part of our story so far and looks forward to continuing to make our impact on people’s lives into the future.
ENDS
