Manager Research

We have recently completed our review of the Laurium fund range. We have rated two of the manager’s funds – the Nedgroup Investments SA Equity Fund and the Laurium Flexible Prescient Fund.

Below, we provide a summary of our ratings on these funds.

Nedgroup SA Equity Fund

We have awarded this fund a Tier 2 rating. The Nedgroup SA Equity Fund was set up during the second half of 2020 after the Laurium Equity Prescient and Nedgroup Growth and Value funds merged to create the fund. We commented on these changes at the time and that commentary can be found here. Essentially, Laurium manages the Nedgroup SA Equity Fund according to the same mandate that was used to run the Laurium Equity Prescient Fund which has now fallen away.

We feel that this mandate is most representative of Laurium’s core skill set, which is in managing an SA-centric equity portfolio with an adequately resourced equity team to cover the breadth of the SA market. Their style agnostic, opportunistic investment approach is difficult to manage and requires focus and strong leadership skills which we think Laurium has demonstrated. In addition, after acquiring Tantalum in 2020, Laurium's investment team has been bolstered but we would like to see how key individuals from Tantalum fit into the business over a longer period of time. Lastly, following the merger with the Nedgroup SA Equity Fund we are comfortable that there have been no material changes to the investment process. The combination of these factors has resulted in us awarding this fund a Tier 2 rating.

Laurium Flexible Prescient Fund

We have retained a Tier 2 rating on this fund. This rating is based on our belief that the fund leverages off Laurium’s core SA Equity skill set. We do feel that Laurium is still in the process of developing its multi-asset competency and following the merger with Tantalum and the onboarding of senior Tantalum investment staff, we would like to see how these areas of expertise develop over a longer period of time.

Amplify SCI Balanced Fund

Previously, we rated the Laurium Balanced Prescient Fund Tier 3.  It has since changed into the Amplify SCI Balanced Fund. The Amplify SCI Balanced Fund is run according to the same underlying process that the Laurium Balanced Prescient was run. Following our most recent review, we have decided to withdraw our rating on this fund. The reason for this is that we feel that several inputs into this fund are still a work in progress, specifically the fixed income and global equity processes. We have seen Melanie Stockigt and Rob Oellermann join Laurium from Tantalum in fixed income and global equity focused roles. While we know both Melanie and Rob from their time at Tantalum we would like to see how they fit into the business going forward and how the fixed income and global equity capabilities develop before we actively rate the fund.