Neil Woodford’s new fund, launched only in June, has surged into second place for overall sales in the first half of the year on the Alliance Trust Savings platform, emphasising the scale of demand for the star manager’s new venture.
Seven out of the top 10 funds on the platform over the first six months of the year were passive, with the HSBC FTSE All Share Index tracker topping the table.
Despite only having been launched in June and the fact that it is an active fund, Neil Woodford’s equity income fund accumulation class is in second place, while its income variant also made the top 10.
Sara Wilson, head of platform proposition at Alliance Trust Savings, said: “Our customers continue to be attracted to [passive] funds because of the low-cost nature and our flat fee structure, the combination of which makes for a very attractive proposition.
“Despite only launching in June both the income and accumulation versions of the Woodford Equity Income fund have made the top 10 most purchased funds.
“This is not a surprise as this fund launch has been widely anticipated ever since Woodford left Invesco Perpetual. The popularity of the fund has continued in July with the accumulation version of the fund ranked second and the income version ranked fifth.”
Mr Woodford’s fund, which has already amassed more than £2.3bn, took the unorthodox step of listing all of the initial investments last month, which saw him widely labelled as the ‘Pied Piper’ of fund management after the prices of minnow companies rocketed.
Barclays has topped the league of individual equity sales for the first half of 2014, according to the research, while public-backed peer Lloyds Banking Group came second and Friends Life Group came third.
Across July 2014 Glaxosmithkline topped the equity league with Friends Life Group and Vodafone Group coming second and third respectively.
Ms Wilson said: “In the first half of 2014 those customers buying equities have continued to show a thirst for blue chip FTSE 100 companies with the majority occupying the top quartile of the FTSE 100 based on market capitalisation.
“It is interesting to see that financial stocks remain popular and despite Barclays’ share price falling during the first six months, it remains a popular stock indicating that our customers are taking a long term view.
