How to generate income with fixed-interest investments

With UK interest rates down to 4.5% and likely to fall further, it is becoming increasingly difficult to earn more than 4% from a deposit account. Inside a cash ISA, there is no tax to pay on interest income, but the chancellor is reported to be keen to chip away at the £50 billion locked up in them, ostensibly to encourage investors to shift into risk-taking assets, but more probably to generate extra tax revenue. What are the alternatives?

There are plenty of conventional investment trusts, especially those investing in UK shares, yielding over 4%, but many investors will not want the stock market risk. For them, Stifel, an investment bank and brokerage, has compiled a list of 33 relatively liquid “alternative funds” yielding between 4% and 15%, generated from what should be more predictable streams of income.

“A cynic would argue that these yields indicate the market is expecting many dividends to be cut,” it points out, “but many of these high yields have arisen due to sharp falls in share prices over the past year”, which is not exactly reassuring for those wanting to avoid risk to their capital.

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“However, those now trading on wide discounts to net asset value [NAV] should have more upside than downside,” especially as “many of the funds have set modestly increased dividend targets for 2025 and projected dividend covers, based on revenues after deducting expenses, typically ranging from 1.1 times to 1.3 times.”

The leading investment trusts

These include a number of funds investing in fixed interest, including the £300 million CQS New City High Yield Fund (LSE: NCYF), trading on a 6% premium to NAV and yielding 8.7%. It invests in high-yielding corporate bonds, which implies high risk, but the manager, Ian Francis, has delivered strong returns for 17 years by focusing on capital preservation, helped by an experienced team of analysts at Manulife CQS, the management company.

Strong performance (11% over one year, 25% over three and 42% over five), and the consequent premium to NAV, has enabled the fund to grow through share issuance (£13.3 million in the last year), although this has always been conservative to prevent the size of the fund swamping the opportunities.

Dividends have risen every year for 16 years, although the rate of increase has slowed to a snail’s pace in the last five years. Most importantly, the fund succeeded in generating positive returns in the last half of 2024, a difficult time for bonds generally, suggesting that it will continue to do so even if ten-year gilt yields head up to 5%.

TwentyFour Income Fund (LSE: TFIF) and TwentyFour Select Monthly Income (LSE: SMIF) have also performed well. TFIF, with £845 million of assets, has returned 15% over one year, 32% over three and 49% over five, while SMIF (£240 million of assets) has returned 17%, 28% and 40%. Their shares trade on a small discount and small premium to NAV respectively and yield 9.1% and 8.5%.

The key to TwentyFour’s success, says manager George Curtis, is “avoiding the accidents”. The investment-trust structure means that “managers are not forced to sell at times of crisis” and “enables us to take advantage of the premium return from illiquidity by investing in less liquid securities”. But the golden rule is “getting your money back by minimising defaults”.

TFIF doesn’t invest in bonds, but in “a diversified portfolio of predominantly UK and European asset backed securities”. Nearly half of the portfolio is in “mortgage backed securities”, mostly residential. Banks package together a large number of mortgages and then turn the package into tradable securities, injecting bank debt to raise returns. The top tier is prioritised in a return of capital while lower tiers are progressively riskier, but have higher coupons.

TFIF also invests in securities based on car loans, consumer loans and “collaterised loan obligations” (nearly 40% of the portfolio), which uses the same process to turn bank loans to companies into tradable securities. About 20% of the portfolio is “investment grade” (lower risk), 46% sub-investment grade (higher-risk, but above junk) and 33% is not rated, which means there is no independent review of the riskiness of the securities.

Around 36% of SMIF’s portfolio is invested in asset-backed securities, but most of it is in “subordinated” bank and insurance-company debt, meaning that it is a lower priority for repayment than other types of debt, thereby providing banks and insurance companies with an additional buffer to share capital in the event of a crisis. Slightly more of its portfolio (30%) is made up of investment-grade debt; 60% consists of sub-investment grade (but above junk) paper and 10% is “not rated”.

While TFIF invests in floating-rate debt and so has no exposure to changes in interest rates, SMIF invests in fixed-rate securities, but with short lives – nearly 90% repay within five years. This all sounds risky, but Curtis points out that the balance sheets of banks and insurance companies are “very strong”, while yields have tightened, “but are still well above those in 2021”. In the personal sector, “unemployment and divorce are the key factors behind defaults”. He notes that “economies have been resilient to higher rates and defaults have remained low. Interest rates in the UK are expected to flatten out at 4%, so it should be pretty easy to maintain 8% returns”.

Less risk, lower returns

Those who are more risk-averse can still earn 8.9% from the £140 million M&G Credit Income Investment Trust (LSE: MGCI), although a portfolio yield to maturity of 7.8% means that it dips into capital to pay the dividend. Like TwentyFour, it invests in “private, semi-liquid assets, mostly held until maturity”, but at least 70% of its portfolio has to be investment grade (the current proportion is 77%). The trust is seeking to raise another £30 million.

MGCI’s lower risk means that its returns have also been lower; 8% over one year, 20% over three and 28% over five. The returns from the Invesco Bond Income Plus Trust (£350 million of net assets) at 9%, 14% and 24% are lower still, as is the yield of 6.8%, but it invests in a “very liquid” portfolio of listed bonds, which reduces the complexity of the portfolio, if not the risk: 70% of the portfolio comprises sub-investment grade paper.

As with the other funds, investing in a portfolio of seemingly low-quality bonds and credit has turned out not to have been nearly as risky as might have been expected. The global financial crisis of 2008-2009 was a shock to the credit-rating agencies who have learned to be a lot more cautious in their assessment of risk – just as the issuers of bonds and loan securities (and, behind them, people and businesses) have learned to be far more prudent.

The result has been that just as government bonds came to be, and probably still are, systematically overvalued, nominally higher-risk fixed-interest investments have been, and remain, undervalued.

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