New Collective Investment Scheme (CIS) launched by Private Client Holdings

Grant Alexander, Director of PCP.

Private Client Portfolios, the asset management arm of Private Client Holdings, has announced the launch of three new unit trust offerings – the PrivateClient BCI Low Equity Fund, the PrivateClient BCI Medium Equity Fund and the PrivateClient BCI High Equity Fund.

The company’s previous multi-manager offerings have evolved into these Collective Investment Schemes (CIS) which are approved and regulated by the Financial Services Board (FSB).

The unit trust portfolios operate under a co-naming agreement with Boutique Collective Investments (BCI) who render the administrative and operational services - such as processing of investor accounts and transactions; monitoring the daily portfolio compliance; calculating the daily price of units; reporting to all regulatory authorities, including the Financial Services Board (FSB) and the Association for Savings and Investment in South Africa (ASISA); as well as liaise with the Trustees of these unit trusts - Standard Bank of South Africa. BCI are currently the largest administrators of such collective investments in South Africa with assets under management of R95 billion.

“Prior to launching these new unit trusts, Private Client Portfolio’s wrap funds consisted of a combination of unit trusts which were held within a wrap model portfolio administrative structure and provided exposure to a combination of the best of breed fund managers,” explains Grant Alexander, Director of PCP. “Within the wrap model portfolio environment, Private Client Holding’s clients held units within a group of different funds on the Investec platform - Nedgroup Rainmaker and Coronation Top20 units. Now, within the new structure, clients hold PrivateClient BCI units, still on the Investec platform, which in turn hold these underlying funds.”

“The main benefits of these new unit trust structures are that they enable us to manage our clients’ investments at optimal efficiency across various platforms, with access to a wider universe of cost effective investments and expertise, and to minimise Capital Gains Tax on switches relating to discretionary investments. We are now operating in a highly regulated environment, especially important during the upcoming Retail Distribution Review (RDR) dispensation, and this new structure ensures transparent pricing. However most exciting for the Private Client Portfolios team is that we can now offer these competitive CIS’s to any interested investor and not only our valued Private Client Holdings clients,” explains Alexander