Selling The Co-operative Asset Management
Overview
The Co-operative Asset Management is the fund management arm of The
The Co-operative Financial Services which is part of The Co-operative, a household name in the UK offering a wide range of services to consumers including food, pharmacy, travel and other financial services such as insurance, banking and mortgages.
The Group has over 12 million customers, of which over 292,000 of these are investors in their unit trust range, amounting to over £2.9 billion of assets under management.
We specialise in active UK equities and bonds, and we offer a distinctive responsible investment approach which fully integrates consideration of financial and ESG (environmental, social and governance) issues throughout the investment process.
[back to top]How we're different
Some fund management groups have taken up socially responsible investment (SRI) in response to demand or have 'bolted on' this capability to their existing investment organisation.
In contrast, our responsible investment origins stem from our co-operative ownership structure which has created a long-standing tradition to operate in a socially responsible manner across all of our diverse business areas.
Our distinctive approach is reflected in a number of unique investment credentials. We are the only UK fund manager to:
- apply a common core approach to responsible investment across all the funds we manage
- apply active engagement across all the funds we manage
- feed valuable business insights gained from our engagement process back in to company analysis performed for investment purposes.
The Co-operative Asset Management was also the first UK investor to publish its voting record on its website in 2002, a practice now increasingly adopted by fund management groups offering SRI.
[back to top]Our investment capability
The Co-operative Asset Management manages a range of portfolios for retail, pension fund, life company and other institutional clients amounting to over £25 billion of assets.
The team comprises over 50 investment professionals, based in Manchester, including:
- equities, fixed income and ESG (environmental, social and governance) research analysts dedicated to researching UK companies
- fund managers focused on stock selection and constructing diversified portfolios which balance performance with risk and volatility
- quantitative, operations and other experts supporting the investment process.
Our investment approach for equities
The Co-operative Asset Management combines bottom-up stock selection with the application of carefully developed themes to construct detailed investment cases on undervalued companies.
The investment approach for our core fund range is characterised by a number of features suited to long-term personal investors:
- an investment approach based on long-term themes naturally aligns with long-term saving requirements
- the funds are actively managed with focused, high conviction portfolios designed to deliver superior long-term investment performance
- low turnover – companies are held for 3 – 4 years compared the industry average of approximately 1 year
- full integration of financial and ESG (environmental, social and governance) considerations throughout the investment process demonstrates a more responsible approach to investing
- all funds operate an exclusion policy, avoiding companies believed to expose investors to unacceptable financial risk resulting from poor management of ESG (environmental, social and governance) issues.
