The Franklin Technology Fund is a long-established global technology fund investing in equities and debt securities globally with an impressive track record of returns.

The Manager’s deep experience and research bench across Franklin’s global network, including its presence in Silicon Valley, is a crucial scale advantage in gathering data and accessing investment opportunities. The Technology Fund has been investing in this sector for over 20 years using a tested process to evaluate the market opportunity, competitive position, management strength, financial profitability, and valuation.

The strong thematic of Digital Transformation anchors investment strategy with sub-themes of AI, cloud computing, SaaS, Fintech, 5G networks, and more. The overall approach is conservative and with substantial risk control measures. Active returns compared with benchmarks are limited over the longer term. The liquidity profile is also below average. Fees paid versus active returns are mediocre value for investors. However, the fund is run conservatively in a volatile market segment, which is a positive.

ESG measures are included in Franklin’s assessment of sustainability issues and incorporated into each analysts’ fundamental research process. That said, ESG does not materially lead the decision-making on the stock selection with ratings of between 20-34%. The maximum decline of the investment portfolio is limited, and the recovery time is relatively short — good risk management and risk-adjusted index performance relatively reasonable.

This fund has been reviewed by six industry veterans of the Benchmark judging committee.