Best selling funds of 2019 named

The fund with the highest net sales in the year was Vanguard Life Strategy 60 per cent equity, with £1.5bn of net new money received.

The Vanguard Life Strategy 40 per cent equity fund was third on the list, with £1.1bn of new cash. 

The best selling active fund, and second on the overall list, was Lindsell Train Global Equity, which had net sales on platforms of £1.4bn.

Mr Train’s UK equity fund also made the top ten of the best selling funds, with net new money of £595m received during the year.

The other three active funds to make the top ten were Fundsmith, which had net sales of £734m, the Castlefield Buffettology fund, which had sales of £508m, and the Investec Diversified Income fund, which is managed by John Stopford and had total sales of £381m, which accounts for about 25 per cent of the total of assets of the £1.4bn fund today. 

A curious quirk of the data is that in the final three months of 2019, there was far more cash pumped into passive investment products than in the rest of the year, with eight of the ten best sellers in that period being tracker funds. 

None of the best selling active funds of the year as a whole made the top ten sellers list for the final quarter of the year, with the giant Baillie Gifford American fund, and the Royal London Sustainable Leaders fund, an ESG product, being the only two active funds to make the list in that quarter. 

Bella Caridade-Ferreira, chief executive of Fundscape said: “Demand for passive funds has grown exponentially. The regulator, advisers and investors are focused on value for money and that is driving down fees and pushing up demand for trackers.

"In 2019 trackers accounted for 40 per cent of sales, but their marketshare rocketed to 52 per cent in the fourth quarter.  We expect that trend to continue in 2020 […] unless of course there’s a significant stock-market correction."

david.thorpe@ft.com 

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