INSURANCE provider The Manufacturers Life Insurance Co. (Philippines) Inc. (Manulife Philippines) has launched a peso equity fund that invests in a varied portfolio composed mainly of top-performing companies with Filipino-Chinese heritage.
Dubbed “Emperor Fund,” it provides clients with access to stocks of leading firms in the banking, food and beverage, industrial, real-estate, energy, utilities and telecommunications sectors.
“Companies with Sino-Filipino heritage are well liked by investors here. These companies tend to deliver a track record of outperformance over the Philippine Stock Exchange Index historically,” said Ryan Charland, president and CEO of Manulife Philippines.
Being a customer-centric investment product, it invests primarily in companies engaged in these industries that boast strong business acumen, prudent management philosophy and exceptional leadership, he said.
Available through most of Manulife Philippines’s regular-pay and single-pay Variable Life products, the fund also buys into other local small- to mid-cap businesses that are emerging market leaders.
It takes advantage of the high-growth potential of these rapidly growing enterprises and provides greater diversification and risk-return tradeoff.
“With the Emperor Fund, our customers will gain more access to growth-oriented investments driven by companies with relentless entrepreneurial spirit, while also enjoying the benefits of our superior life-insurance solutions,” Charland said.
Established in 1907, Manulife Philippines is a wholly owned domestic subsidiary of Manulife Financial Corp. (MFC), among the world’s largest life-insurance companies by market capitalization with principal operations in Asia, Canada and the United States.
Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, the multinational trades as “MFC” on the Toronto, New York, and the Philippine stock exchanges, and under “945” in Hong Kong.
For the second quarter of 2018, MFC’s net income attributed to shareholders reached $1.262 billion compared to $1.255 billion in the same period last year.
As of June 30, it had over $1.1 trillion in assets under management and administration, and in the previous 12 months made $27.6 billion in payments to customers worldwide.