The Board has 6 trustees, of which 50% are independent.

The Fund offers two streams of trustee-approved default investment strategies for the participating employers to choose from, as their sub-fund’s default investment strategy. This selection must be based upon the investment objectives of the employer’s members.
The lifestage strategy option has four lifestage strategies to select from, while the protection strategy option has three protection strategies to select from.

Lifestage Strategies:
Sanlam Lifestage Strategy
Passive Lifestage Strategy
Sanlam Blue Lifestage Strategy
Sanlam Wealth Creation Lifestage Strategy

Protection Strategies:
Volatility Protection Strategy
Sanlam Stable Strategy
Sanlam Secure Strategy

The lifestage model invests members’ funds based on their risk appetite relative to their time to retirement. The Lifestage model is designed to meet the income needs of members post-retirement, by gradually shifting the member’s share into a preservation phase portfolio suitable for acquiring a retirement annuity of their choice.
It does so in two phases: Accumulation and Preservation.
Accumulation Phase: Members who are more than 6 years away from their Normal Retirement Age or Planned Retirement Age (if different) are fully invested in the Accumulation portfolio of their employer selected lifestage strategy. This allows their retirement savings to grow, taking advantage of a growth portfolio during their younger years. As members approach retirement, their retirement savings are automatically moved from the Accumulation to the Preservation phase based on the member’s actual age. This is done by transferring approximately 2% of their retirement savings every month from the Accumulation portfolio to the Preservation portfolio over a 50-month period. The monthly switches are repeated until the exposure to the Accumulation Portfolio is zero and the member is fully invested in the Preservation portfolio 23 months prior to retirement.
Preservation phase: Members nearing retirement are invested in a more conservative portfolio that aims to protect their retirement savings from fluctuations in the investment markets.
The Sanlam Capital Protection Portfolio was selected as the preservation phase portfolio given its objective to protect the invested capital by guaranteeing the net contributions invested. The portfolio invests in the Sanlam Stable Bonus Portfolio. The Stable Bonus Portfolio provides investors with exposure to the financial markets, which provides investors with exposure to equity markets, but also protects them against adverse market movements. This is achieved by smoothing the returns over time and guaranteeing the net contributions invested together with the vested bonuses in case of resignation, retirement, death, retrenchment or disability.
Non-vested bonuses are also declared over and above the vested bonuses. These can be removed in very extreme circumstances though this has never yet occurred since the portfolio’s commencement in 1986. The underlying portfolio has a diversified exposure to domestic equity, bonds, property, and alternative investments as well as international assets. The portfolio has a conservative risk profile.

Sanlam Lifestage Strategy
This is the Fund’s main default strategy. The strategy is a multi-managed strategy combining the best of both a passive and active management style in the accumulation phase. This effectively means that the passive acts as the core or base of the portfolio whilst the active managers (the satellites) help enhance the returns.
The Sanlam Lifestage Accumulation Portfolio aims to provide market related growth to members who are more than six years from retirement and who need to grow their retirement savings. The portfolio allocates its assets across equity, bond, property, cash, hedge fund and international portfolios. In the case of each domestic portfolio a core/satellite investment strategy is employed. The core is a low-cost index-tracking strategy, around which the satellite managers aim for active returns through the outperformance of their respective benchmarks. The portfolio has an aggressive risk profile.

Passive Lifestage Strategy
This strategy is suitable for members who aim to contain investment management costs by choosing a passive investment management strategy tracking market indices.
The Passive Lifestage Accumulation Portfolio's objective is to provide high long-term investment growth. It invests primarily in equities, property, fixed-interest investments, cash and foreign assets. Each of the underlying asset classes, except cash, is managed on a passive basis - in other words, by tracking an underlying index. Tactical asset allocation is also employed to enhance the performance of the fund relative to the performance of its benchmark. The portfolio has a moderate to aggressive risk profile.

Sanlam Blue Lifestage Strategy
The Sanlam Blue Lifestage Accumulation Portfolio aims to invest 50% in Sanlam Multi-Asset Growth Fund and 50% in SPW Balanced Fund. Both portfolios invest in a wide spectrum of investments in equity, bonds, money and property markets in order to maximise total returns over the long term. By investing in a portfolio which diversifies across all the major asset classes, investors “outsource” the difficult decision of how much and when to invest in the different asset categories to the fund manager. The portfolio is suitable for investors requiring capital growth via a moderate-aggressive risk balanced portfolio.

Sanlam Wealth Creation Lifestage Strategy
The Sanlam Wealth Creation Portfolio aims to deliver superior real returns over the long term. This balanced portfolio is managed on a multi-manager basis and includes international exposure. Each manager has been selected based on rigorous quantitative and qualitative analysis. The portfolio construction includes both domestic balanced mandates, passive exposure as well as specialist mandates.

The Protection Strategies
The second stream of default investment strategies approved by the trustees is suitable for members who wish to achieve inflation-beating real returns over the medium to long term, but who are particularly concerned against significant short-terms investment losses.

Volatility Protection Strategy
The core objective of this investment strategy is to cater for the needs of members who are greatly concerned about short term volatility. The trustees have approved this alternative default investment strategy suitable for members who wish to achieve inflation-beating real returns over the medium to long term, but who are particularly concerned about protecting against significant short-term investment losses.
The trustees review the investment strategy of the Volatility Protection Strategy continually and will make periodic changes to the underlying investments in line with the objectives of the strategy. The Volatility Protection Strategy aims to invest 75% in the Sanlam Monthly Bonus Fund and 25% in the Satrix Enhanced Balanced Tracker Fund.

Sanlam Secure Strategy
This strategy fully invests in the Sanlam Monthly Bonus Fund. The objective of the Sanlam Monthly Bonus Fund is to provide investors with exposure to the financial markets, while protecting them against adverse movements in the markets. This is achieved by smoothing the returns over time, and guaranteeing (for resignation, retirement, death, retrenchment, and disability events) the net contributions invested together with the net bonuses declared monthly.
The strategy could be considered by investors preferring a cautious approach to money management; investors who require capital security and investors who regard financial security as highly important.

Sanlam Stable Strategy
This strategy provides exposure to financial markets, while protecting members against adverse movements in the markets. This is achieved by smoothing the returns over time, and guaranteeing (for resignation, retirement, death, retrenchment and disability events) the net contributions invested together with the vested bonuses. Non-vested bonuses are also declared on top of that. These can be removed in very extreme circumstances though this has never yet occurred since the underlying investment portfolio’s commencement in 1986.
The strategy could be considered by investors preferring a cautious, arm’s-length approach to money management; investors wishing to avoid any chance of losing money; investors who require capital security and investors who regard financial security as highly important. The strategy currently invests all contributions in the Sanlam Stable Bonus Portfolio.

Member Choice Portfolios:
SIM Enhanced Cash Fund
Monthly Bonus Fund
Stable Bonus Fund
Progressive Smooth
Bonus Fund
SMM30
SMM Moderate Absolute Fund
SIM Moderate Absolute Fund
SMM 50
SMM NUR Balanced Fund,
SIM Temparance Balanced Fund
Sanlam Wealth Creation Portfolio
Sanlam Accumulation Portfolio
SMM Select Balanced Fund
SMM 70
SATRIX Enhanced Balanced Tracker
Sanlam The Most Aggressive Portfolio
Sanlam Multi-Asset Growth Fund
SPW Balanced Fund
Allan Gray Global Balanced
Coronation Houseview
Foord Balanced Fund
Ninety One Balanced
M&G Balanced Fund
PSG Balanced Fund
Truffle Balanced Fund
Camissa Balanced Fund
Sanlam Living Planet Fund

Sanlam Group Risk
ABSA Life