Benefits of investing in the Robeco Global DM Conservative Equities Fund (AUD)

Investing in the Fund provides investors with a range of key benefits including:

• Access to Robeco's investment management and advisory expertise;

• Potential to obtain enhanced returns from global markets;

• Proven track record of Robeco's investment team; and

• Diversification when employed in conjunction with other asset classes and investment styles.

Risk level

High

Investor suitability

The Fund is suitable for investors seeking exposure to global equities.

About the Fund

The Robeco Global DM Conservative Equities Fund (AUD) invests in low volatility stocks with lower expected downside risk and good upside potential. The more stable stocks tend to be overlooked by investors, though they offer relatively high returns given their risk profile. We expect the fund to do particularly well during down markets and volatile market conditions. In a very bullish environment, the fund could lag the overall market, yet still deliver good absolute returns. In the long term, we expect stable equity returns and high income with considerably lower downside risk.

The selection of these low-risk stocks is carried out using a quantitative model, which ranks stocks in a variety of ways, including market sensitivity, volatility, valuation and sentiment.

Investment objective

The objective of the Fund is to deliver long-term equity return at a lower downside risk than that of the Reference Index. It aims to achieve the highest long-term Sharpe ratio (the average return earned in excess of the risk-free rate per unit of volatility or total risk), delivering returns equal to or greater than its Reference index over a full market cycle.

How we invest your money

The Fund will primarily be invested in companies that mainly operate in mature economies (developed markets) all over the world. The Fund will focus on investing in equities that show lower expected volatility than average global equity.

The Fund seeks to meet its investment objective by having exposure of 90-100% of its assets to equities of companies that mainly operate in developed markets.

The residual balance of assets will be maintained in cash or cash equivalent investments for liquidity purposes.

Investment process

The selection of the equities that show lower expected volatility than average global equities is carried out using a quantitative model, which ranks stocks in a variety of ways, including market sensitivity, volatility, distress risk, valuation and sentiment.

Investment strategy

The investment strategy of the Fund seeks to capture the low-risk anomaly described as follows.

Analysis by Robeco has shown that low-risk stocks (in terms of volatility and beta) are able to generate returns equal to, or greater than, the market with lower associated risks. The beta of a stock or portfolio is a number describing the correlated volatility of an asset in relation to the volatility of the benchmark that the asset is being compared to.