WHERE ASSET MANAGERS ARE SEEKING RETURNS
like any business during one of the world’s most extreme lockdowns, South African asset and investment managers have had to contend with unprecedented and unexpected disruptions to operations because of theCovid-19 pandemic. Some of these adaptations will be temporary, but some will likely reshape the industry for many years to come.
TheCovid-19 pandemic is proving to be one of the worst crises to confront the investment community, but SA fund managers believe the crisis merely serves to reinforce the investor biases that were already in place before lockdown.
In response to the pandemic, what South Africans have elected to do with their investments is to accelerate a five-year trend. The latest quarterly report from the Association for Savings and Investment SA (Asisa) shows that local investors have shunned high-equity or balanced funds to find more certainty and protection from volatility in money market and fixed-income funds. To date, decent yields have proven them right.
“We’ve seen meaningful growth in the market share of money market funds, from 15% to 18% in the last
