Assets under management by Sun Life hit P20.6B as of May

MANILA, Philippines - Sun Life Asset Management Co. Inc. (SLAMC) has reported assets under management (AUM) worth P20.6 billion at the end of May this year, one of the biggest in the country’s mutual fund industry.

SLAMC, the fund manager subsidiary of Sun Life Financial Philippines Inc., said its AUMs stood at P19.37 billion at the start of the year.

“The Sunlife Prosperity Funds have grown by 30 percent as of May 2011 on a year-on-year basis,” Valerie N. Pama, chief operating officer of SLAMC, said.

The largest mutual fund remains the Balanced Fund with P9 billion in assets, followed by the Bond Fund at P5.2 billion. The equity fund is third largest with AUMs worth P3.6 billion.

The Money Market Fund stood at P462 million while the GS Fund was valued at P767 million.

The equity fund invests in the stock market while the bond fund focuses on investments in fixed income products such as high-grade corporate debt papers. The balanced fund is generally a mixture of equity and part bond investments.

Investors with a high-risk appetite usually put their money in the equity fund while investors with a more conservative attitude opt for the bond fund.

The money market fund is invested in special savings accounts while the GS Fund are principally invested in government debt papers. Both are extremely conservative, thus with lower but safer returns.

Meanwhile, the Dollar Advantage Fund was pegged at $26 million as of end-May, with a growth of 36 percent on a year-on-year basis. It is a dollar-denominated balanced fund.

The Dollar Abundance Fund, a fund invested in foreign-denominated government and corporate debt papers, was worth $11.8 million.

Pama said SLAMC has two new products in the pipeline that may be launched in the fourth quarter of the year and the first quarter next year. The first is a peso-denominated equity fund while the other is a dollar-denominated fund composed of overseas assets.

The dollar fund is presently seeking approval with the Securities and Exchange

Commission (SEC) while the equity fund is “still in the drawing board.”

Last year, the country’s mutual fund industry managed AUMs worth P95.7 billion, or 8.75 percent higher than the previous record level of P88 billion recorded in 2007.

There are 46 mutual funds in the industry, nurtured by a dozen fund managers, such as SLAMC.