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Our investment philosophy

 

Deep experience. Market-leading investing.

MLC’s investment team pioneered the multi-manager investment model in Australia over 35 years ago to help investors achieve their goals. So when you're invested in an MLC portfolio, your money is with Australia's most experienced multi-manager.

We have more than 45 investment professionals** united in their focus to deliver consistent performance that supports you to achieve financial wellbeing.

Find out about the investment philosophy that guides how we manage your money, our investment process and the managers we use in our portfolios.

** Broader MLC Asset Management team of 158 staff. Figure current as at 30 June 2023.

How we invest.

There are four key aspects to our market-leading investment approach.

    • Our multi-asset portfolios focus on what affects investor outcomes the most: asset allocation. Each asset class has its own risk and return characteristics.
    • Our investment process blends a range of inputs to help us assess likely asset class return expectations over the short and longer-term.
    • In an unpredictable and constantly changing world we also apply a unique scenarios analysis (the Investment Futures Framework) that continually identifies the very wide range of potential market scenarios – good and bad – that could occur to further inform our forward-looking approach.
    • The insights from our investment process are used to work out the combination of asset classes that they believe will best achieve investment objectives. 

    We invest in many asset classes to help us smooth out overall portfolio returns, offsetting the ups and downs of each asset class.

  • Our portfolios have different investment objectives. That's why our investment experts select a different mix of assets and investment managers for each.

    Our investment managers may be specialist in-house managers, external managers or a combination of both.

    We research hundreds of investment managers from around the world and select from the best for our portfolios.

    We then combine them in our portfolios so they complement each other.

    This multi-manager approach helps to reduce risk and deliver more consistent returns.

    Find out more about our current investment managers.

    View the current managers of a portfolio and their allocations using the Fund Profile Tool.

  • To make sure our portfolios are working hard for our investors, we continually review and actively manage them.

    We may adjust the asset allocation, investment strategies and managers. This may be because our assessment of the future market environment has altered or because we have found new ways to balance risk and return in the portfolios.

  • We deliver better returns by avoiding unnecessary costs. We do this by carefully managing cash flows, tax and changes in our portfolios.

Latest investment news and insights
Read about recent investment news and insights.

Derivatives policy
Derivatives are financial instruments such as options, futures and swaps. Generally, derivatives are used as part of a strategy to reduce risk or improve returns. The derivative policies for our product issuers outline how we manage derivatives.

Responsible Investing Policy

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors can influence investment outcomes and should be managed prudently.

Investment management decisions for the MLC investment options on our investment menus are made by our investment experts at MLC Asset Management Services Limited (MSL), and the investment managers they select.

MSL expects active investment managers to consider material effects any factors may have on investment returns, including ESG and ethical factors. MSL, primarily through its investment managers, may also engage with companies, providing an opportunity to enhance and protect the long-term value of investments.

We also believe voting on resolutions for the companies we invest in and actively engaging with companies provides an opportunity to enhance and protect the long-term value of clients’ portfolios.

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