AXA Investment Managers will introduce ‘single swing’ pricing to its AXA Framlington funds, with the first set of funds making the change on September 8.
The asset manager will replace its current bid and offer prices with a single price to protect the interests of existing unitholders by minimising the impact of large inflows or outflows.
Rob Bailey, head of UK wholeseale distribution at AXA IM said: “For us it makes sense. Single pricing is easier for customers to understand, it’s transparent. The market in general is moving towards this kind of pricing.
“If you’ve watched the evolution of the business over the years we have the open-ended investment company (Oeic) range and the unit trust, Framlington range. What we decided to do is to bring [the Framlington range] closer to being like the Oeic fund range.”
The value of existing investors’ holdings is protected as the manager has the ability to swing the price of units for incoming and outgoing clients.
The process will be applied to the funds in four rounds with the first change taking place to five funds on September 8.
Mr Bailey said some funds, by their very nature, will move more dramatically than others.
He expects the AXA Framlington UK Smaller Companies fund to swing more dramatically than some of the others. This fund will switch to “single swing” pricing on October 6.
AXA IM joins the ranks of fund groups that have moved over to single pricing, which include BlackRock, Franklin Templeton and Standard Life Investments.
