VAM partners up with Close Brothers AM
VAM Funds has entered into a partnership with UK-based Close Brothers Asset Management (CBAM) to meet a rising demand for discretionary fund management services from international advisers.
The tie-up will see three of CBAM’s products, which are normally available only in the UK, become available internationally through VAM Discretionary Funds.
VAM said the partnership comes as international advisers move away from self-selecting and managing portfolios on an ongoing basis for clients to focus on financial planning. Nigel Watson, sales director for VAM Funds, said: “Financial intermediaries based internationally are increasingly realising their skills are primarily in financial planning and relationship management, not in picking funds or building and managing clients’ investment portfolios.”
The deal marks a return to the offshore world for FTSE 250-listed Close Brothers, which sold its offshore private banking, fund administration, fund management, trust and asset management businesses based in Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man, to private bank Kleinwort Benson for £29.1m in 2011.
The diversified, multi-asset, risk-rated investment portfolios will continue to be managed by CBAM under a discretionary fund management agreement via a Luxembourg-domiciled UCITS IV fund structure.
The funds – the VAM Close Brothers Cautious Fund, the VAM Close Brothers Balanced Fund and the VAM Close Brothers Growth Fund – are managed using the same strategy as CBAM’s Close Discretionary Funds Managed Funds of Funds proposition.
They aim to provide all-in-one portfolios to those seeking capital preservation, income or growth.
“There is growing demand for risk-rated, multi-asset, managed fund solutions that provide international advisers and their clients with effective access to a first-class discretionary fund manager,” Watson said.
“With the VAM Discretionary Funds, each client benefits from the same investment process previously only available to those with significant sums to invest.”
Brendan Adams, fund development director for VAM, added that the company was already seeing “great interest” from IFAs around the world in its new proposition.
