Aberdeen Standard Investments has launched eight passive investment funds, available only on the company’s own platforms.
The range consists of five fixed income funds, and three equity funds available only on the Standard Life Wrap and Elevate platforms.
The funds will be run by the quantitative investment team at Aberdeen Standard Investments. Their charges range from three to ten basis points.
They will use either the market cap of a company in an index or the level of debt of companies in an index to select the investments.
David Tiller, head of UK propositions, said: "Since taking the lead in platform unbundling and ‘superclean’, Standard Life has a track record of actively negotiating with investment managers to secure greater fund choice for advisers using Wrap and Elevate.
"Today, more advisers are looking for flexibility to make the right active decisions while ‘cost balancing’ their portfolios using an index fund allocation.
"Being able to secure favourable terms for index funds means advisers and discretionary managers have more freedom to allocate to the best opportunities for their clients."
Tom Sparke, investment director at GDIM, a discretionary fund management firm in Cambridge, said: "It is always welcome to see new ‘building block’ investments which are attractively or even aggressively priced and these will certainly appeal to the DFM market.
"It is the latest move in an ever-more competitive marketplace. However, it may cause issues with those that run model portfolios across more than one platform where these would not be accessible."
david.thorpe@ft.com
