Total return funds face differentiation challenge

Mark Dampier, head of research at Hargreaves Lansdown, says the challenge of differentiation is one of the issues highlighted by his firm’s own study of the sector thus far. The idea of total returns as a whole has been given a push by Ucits III rules, which allow investments in financial derivative instruments, says Richard Romer-Lee, head of research OBSR. Dampier says, however, that total return funds launched by UBS, Credit Suisse, and Baring are fairly similar, and that Hargreaves Lansdown is not marketing any of them currently. One of the reasons is figuring out how to explai...