Aviva Investors has added former Schroders bond manager Emma Halley to the team that runs its targeted return fund range.
Ms Halley worked as a bond analyst and fund manager at Schroders until 2014, and more recently as head of portfolio management at Fulcrum Asset Management, a fund house focused on using quantitative analysis to select investment products.
Ms Halley’s title at Aviva will be head of investment process for multi-asset and macro, a role that will involve her "generating ideas" for the £5bn Aviva Investors Targeted Absolute Return fund range, the firm stated.
Ms Halley will report to Peter Fitzgerald, chief investment officer for multi-asset and macro.
Mr Fitzgerald said: “We are very pleased to welcome Emma to the team and look forward to benefiting from her experience as we continue to focus on strong idea generation to drive performance across our portfolios.
“Her appointment follows the changes we made to our investment platform last year, establishing a combined multi asset and macro function and materially increasing our equity capabilities.
"We believe we are now starting to see the benefit of the improved idea generation that has resulted from this across the portfolios.”
Aviva Investor's multi-strategy range is made up predominantly of the Targeted Absolute Return fund and the Targeted Absolute Return Income fund.
Aviva's Targeted Income fund has returned 3 per cent over the past year compared with a return of just over 1 per cent for the average fund in the IA Targeted Return sector.
It has underperformed the sector over three years however, according to FE Analytics.
Its Targeted Absolute Return fund has marginally outperformed the sector average over the past year but underperformed over three years.
Absolute Return funds aim to achieve a return in all market conditions and focus on achieving lower volatility than the market as a whole.
The products were the subject of strong demand a decade ago, with Standard Life’s Global Absolute Return fund becoming the largest fund in the UK retail market, but this fund is no longer among the top ten, according to data from Morningstar.
The data shows investors pulled £376m from the Aviva's multi strategy range in August, the largest since inception.
david.thorpe@ft.con
