new year news
As 2009 draws to a close, we are pleased to announce that SEI has had a strong year, driven by both the market recovery and a commitment to our disciplined investment philosophy. We would also like to share with you some recent internal changes and improvements.
Since mid-March, global equity and credit markets have made a strong recovery. Throughout 2009, companies have beaten earnings expectations and key players in the market have shown strong support for the re-emergence of growth.
Our active investment solutions, based on strategic, long-term, and fully invested asset allocation disciplines, helped SEI's portfolios to capture this recovery. SEI's philosophy is based on commitment to strategic asset allocation that can provide diversification benefits and additional return potential.
The numbers speak volumes: year-to-date to the end of November, an SEI Balanced Model gained 12.58%, and outperformed its benchmark by 0.23%*. Recovery is even more evident in Fixed Income: over the same time period, SEI's Global Fixed Income Fund is up 8.00% and outperformed its benchmark by 1.81% and SEI's Global Opportunistic Fixed Income Fund returned 13.41%, outperforming its benchmark by 7.06%**.
Throughout 2009 we made some important upgrades to our investment management function and investment process:
- Firstly, we enhanced the risk management function within our investment management unit, adding a number of additional checks and balances to our manager selection and monitoring process.
- Secondly, we made significant investments in additional risk assessment tools which are designed to help our portfolio managers to quickly identify diminishing diversification and deliver an immediate warning system to deviation above benchmarks.
- Thirdly, we made a change in the way that we allocate capital to our managers, in order to help reduce the possibility of any one manager dominating a fund from a risk perspective.
We have also recently completed a restructuring of two global bond funds. The new investment objectives of the Global Fixed Income and Global Opportunistic Fixed Income Funds provides each with a unique focus; with Global Fixed Income becoming government bond-oriented and Global Opportunistic Fixed Income credit-oriented. This, combined with the addition of new specialist managers, is designed to enable a greater degree of control over sector allocation and active risk at the fund and strategy level.
We believe that these changes will further enhance your confidence in SEI and we look forward to working with you in 2010 as we continue to develop our investment offering.
With best wishes for the festive season and the year ahead.
The value of an investment and any income from it can go down as well as up. Investors may not get back the orginal amount invested. If the investment is withdrawn in the early years, it may not return the full amount invested. In addition to the normal risks associated with equity investing, international investments may involve risk of capital loss from unfavourable fluctuation in currecy values, from differences in generally accepted accounting principles or from economic or political instability in other nations. Narrowly focused investments and smaller companies typically exhibit higher volatility. products of companies in which technology funds may be subject to severe competition and repaid obsloescence.