Liberty’s Evolve - a first of its kind investment solution -has reached the R10 billion mark in investments in combined efforts with the Gateway Investment Range, Liberty’s Linked Investment Service Provider (LISP) platform.
David Lloyd, Managing Director of Liberty Investments says, “Evolve’s growth trajectory has surpassed everyone’s expectations. When we launched in October 2012, we anticipated R700m worth of sales in our first year; however we exceeded R3 billion.”
Evolve was designed to meet the growing demands of investors who didn’t like the idea of effectively paying upfront for their investments (as all other investment products work) – hence the creation of a pay-on-delivery investment product.
“What has proved incredibly popular amongst investors is the product’s simple promise. If your investment does not achieve a target return of 13% per annum after tax; then you do not pay for any of the upfront investment costs, including initial advice fees and set-up expenses,” says Lloyd.
Lloyd explains that another benefit of this approach is that with Evolve an investor’s ongoing costs for their equity investment can be as little as 0.5%; compared to an industry average in excess of 2% per year.
“Whilst this difference may seem insignificant, in saving for retirement, it all adds up. Twenty years on, an investor who is paying 2% a year on their fees, could-end up with up to 35% less of their total investment. Investors will only pay more than 0.5%, if the total return of the JSE’s Top 40 shares is more than 13% a year after tax in the first three years only,” says Lloyd.
Complimentary to Evolve, the Gateway Investment Range was launched six months later, providing investors with access to over 75 different unit trusts managed by 16 different asset managers. Despite competitors having a 20 year head-start, Gateway is already listed in the top ten Linked Investment Service Provider (LISP) platforms in South Africa.
Gateway was specifically designed with an understanding that, even for the most savvy investor, life still happens, which is why it includes a highly flexible monthly investment arrangement and allows investors to access all of their money at any time. It provides zero platform charges on cash unit trust holdings but still gives a customer credit for the value of these assets when determining the on-going platform fee rate. “Investors can also invest in their choice of unit trusts using Evolve’s ‘pay on delivery’ concept,” Lloyd points out.
“Despite a more depressed economic environment than two years ago, Evolve and Gateway continue to attract the attention of investors and advisers, standing out as a game changer in the investment industry,” says Lloyd.
“However this is only the beginning, we are planning to create an entire suite of similarly innovative products, all with the design mandate of clients first.”
Get the latest issue of FAnews