Sun Life targets P55-B AUM this year

MANILA, Philippines – The Sun Life Asset Management Co. Inc. (SLAMCI) is targeting to increase its assets under management (AUM) to P55 billion this year.

It stood at a little over P50 billion at the start of the year, already a record high for the mutual fund manager of the Sun Life Financial Philippines group.

“It is a little modest,” Slamci president Valerie Pama said.

While the AUM target may be modest, its development of its distribution network is not.

Aside from its 2,985-strong agency network, bancassurance arrangement with Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC), Slamci established marketing and distribution with other institutions such as COL Financial Group, which has allowed the public to invest in the stock market online as well as mutual funds.

It also went straight to the market place, meaning offered individual companies investment opportunities as employee benefits.

“Twenty companies has already signed up, and we have several in the pipeline including cooperatives,” Pama said.

Slamci manages the largest number of individual mutual fund investors at 100,000 accounts of the 300,000 or so, total accounts in the country’s mutual fund industry.

Meanwhile, the fund manager looks over 11 mutual funds, which are in peso or US dollar denominated mutual funds.

The largest investments are found in the balanced and equity funds.

The Sun Life Prosperity Equity Fund, or the mutual fund invested in the stock market or securities, continues to be the top performer among all its funds, posting a five-year return of 46.45 percent. AUMs are a little over P15 billion.

Second best performing fund is the Sun Life Prosperity Balanced Fund (combination of fixed income and equity) with net assets worth almost P16 billion, and the Sun Life Prosperity Bond Fund, which marked a five-year return of 36.46 percent and 21.3 percent, respectively.

The newest mutual funds are the Dollar Wellspring Fund and the World Voyager Fund.

Well Spring, a fund-of-funds invested in an offshore fund, pays out stock dividends every six months, the first of its kind in the Philippines.

Slamci also launched the Money For Life e-planner, a platform that will help address financial planning in a simple way. “Online facility that enables clients to determine financial solutions suited to their financial goals and needs,” Pama said.