On 7^th April 2016, and following The Adviser Centre Monthly Review Meeting on 30^th March 2016, Legal & General Managed Monthly Income Trust was added to The Adviser Centre as a Recommended fund.

The fund is managed by the Mark Benstead, an experienced member of Legal & General Investment Management’s established and well-resourced fixed income team.  The fund is a diversified portfolio of primarily investment grade bonds and managed in a risk-aware manner.  The manager aims to deliver an attractive level of income compared to the prevailing environment, as well as generating incremental returns relative to the fund’s benchmark.

The manager seeks to achieve this through a team-based approach that combines macro-economic analysis and rigorous bottom-up credit research.   Whilst there is a keen focus on “avoiding the losers”, he is prepared to utilise the bounds of the fund’s mandate where the team holds strong views on specific areas of value within the market.  These views may extend to high yield bonds, where an allocation of up to 20% is permitted.  This means there is the scope for variability in the fund’s relative performance when higher conviction views are being reflected, although position sizes are still carefully considered in the context of the benchmark.

We believe the fund can be used comfortably as a mainstay holding within a corporate bond blend and it has the added attraction of a monthly income-paying share class if desired.  As such, we are delighted to include the fund in our Recommended List.

Within The Adviser Centre, we feature the fund in our “Moderately Flexible” category in our IA Sector Overview for the £ Corporate Bond sector.    For this sector, we classify our featured funds according to investment approach, as follows:

• Constrained
• Moderately Flexible
• Very Flexible

Please see our IA Sector Overview for the £ Corporate Bond sector for further details.  These documents are helpful in providing sector perspectives and in assisting with the blending of funds for portfolios.