Afores’ investments in international mutual funds are a reality. Prudently and seeking “that this global diversification is the best for the worker,” Afore SURA was the first Afore to put resources to work using this vehicle.
The Afore, which has a Silver Morningstar Analyst Classification for its solid investment team, decided to start with 1,46% of its assets, or about 500 million dollars, which it distributed to global strategies of Morgan Stanley AM and Investec, as Andrés Moreno Arias, Investment Director of Afore SURA said in an interview with Funds Society.
According to Moreno, “for SURA it is a strategic issue to have managers who can help us with our portfolios in the public and private market, we had to have access to these managers and once authorized [to use them], we almost immediately took the first step”. That is why SURA and other afores spent the last two years talking with the regulator and lobbying about the importance of access to specialists in active management in both public and private markets.
In Moreno’s opinion, “every time you expand the investment regime you are opening up to places where, for example in Asia we have less knowledge than someone who has been there a lifetime, so once the investment regime opens up, it is important that we are given access to tools that allow us access to experts, always keeping costs in check, so that it always represents a net benefit for the clients.”
The way in which they make their investment decisions is based on three stages: “the first stage involves the analysis of the world and the companies’ possibilities regaring profit generation in an overview that begins the allocation process as it defines where we are going to invest in. In a second stage the asset class is defined, in this case equity, then regions, themes… and a final stage involves deciding whether we to do it actively or passively.” As Moreno lets us know, as a result of this analysis, he expects that “in the regions where we will rely on specialized managers we plan to give between 30 and 40% of new investments to active managers.”
Within the active strategies, the manager – who has already closed some mandates, is still open to their use. “The decision between mandates and mutual funds has to do with the issue of costs and benefits for our clients. The mandates open an infrastructure within the managers to attend a particular account, and it becomes much more expensive, so in some cases we decided to close mandates and open funds, but that does not always have to be the case… If what is best suited to our investment strategy is to do it through mandates, we will do so.”
Currently Moreno and his team, which has almost doubled in recent years, likes technology themes and as a region, Asia.