Alliance Trust: A one-stop shop for global equities

When it comes to funds, DIY investors have plenty of options. From index funds, offering returns that simply track the market at low cost, to specialist regional or sector funds, which aim to profit from developments in specific economies, or the growth of new industries, investors are faced with almost limitless choice.

But, unless you have the confidence and time to be your own fund manager, building and managing an investment portfolio can be confusing and lead to expensive mistakes.

Alliance Trust aims to do all the hard work for you. We offer a competitively priced, one-stop shop for global equities that requires low maintenance.

Our objective

The fund is designed to deliver a return over the long term that beats inflation through a combination of capital growth and a rising dividend. We invest in stock markets worldwide by choosing a team of fund managers, all with different areas of expertise, so that you don’t have to.

This results in a carefully balanced equity portfolio, which avoids taking big bets on any country, sector or investment style outperforming. Instead, we just focus on picking the best companies across the whole market.

Designed to perform

Returns are driven by the skill of the nine top fund managers. Each contributes a bespoke selection of 10-20 of their most exciting ideas, which collectively make up the Alliance Trust portfolio. The focus of the managers on high-conviction stock picking gives the portfolio strong potential to outperform the index.

Expert manager selection

Our team of nine complementary fund managers is chosen by Willis Towers Watson (WTW). WTW has decades of experience advising some of the world’s largest pension schemes about the best fund managers globally. It also directly manages more than £140bn in multi-manager portfolios for institutional investors.1

Exclusive stock picks

Alliance Trust is the only way private investors in the UK can gain access to each manager’s concentrated stock picks.

Risk controlled

Our multi-manager approach reduces risk and volatility, smoothing out the peaks and troughs of performance normally associated with a single manager’s approach to investing. Unlike funds run by lone star stock pickers, there is no key-man risk.

Responsibly managed

As long-term investors, we make sure the portfolio is responsibly managed by looking beyond today’s profit and loss accounts, giving full consideration to environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors that may affect a company’s prospects.

Reliable and increasing dividends

We’re also proud of our track record of paying rising dividends. As an investment trust, we have over many years been able to build up significant reserves which we can draw on to sustain our progressive dividend policy through periods when there is a shortfall of income from the portfolio.

Even in the current environment, when many companies worldwide are suspending or cutting dividends to conserve cash during the Covid-19 crisis, we expect to extend our current 53-year record of increasing dividends in 2020 and beyond.

Competitive costs 

Finally, we aim to keep costs as low as possible to ensure they don’t eat into your returns. Our ongoing charges ratio at the end of 2019 was 0.62%. 

One fund, multiple drivers of return

With multiple drivers of returns in one fund managed by experts, we believe Alliance Trust could be the only equity investment you will ever need.

Past performance is not a reliable guide to future returns. Please note the value of investments and any income from them can go down as well as up. Your capital is at risk and you may not get back what you originally invested.

Notes to Editors: Towers Watson Investment Management Limited (“TWIM”), part of Willis Towers Watson, has approved this communication. This communication is intended for general information purposes only and it should not be considered a substitute for specific professional advice. In particular, its contents are not intended by Willis Towers Watson to be construed as the provision of investment, legal, accounting, tax or other professional advice or recommendations of any kind, or to form the basis of any decision to do or to refrain from doing anything. As such, this material should not be relied upon for investment or other financial decisions and no such decisions should be taken on the basis of its contents without seeking specific advice.

1. As at 31 March 2020.

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