The Schroder ISF Global Credit Income Fund aims to provide a stable stream of income and capital growth by investing in global bonds and consistently beating its benchmark.

We note the fund's broad diversification within the bond universe with investments across investment grade, high-yield securities, asset-backed securities, emerging market sovereign, and municipal bonds. The Manager uses various tools to manage risk and its investment process and generate alpha from its proprietary quantitative methods and Schroder's data science capability.

The fund has a highly developed ESG approach with a dedicated ESG investment team who routinely work closely with the bond investment team to identify material ESG issues and likely impact on issuer cash flows. Schroders has also developed a proprietary investment strategy factor, the “"Global Credit Clock,"" which calculates countries' environmental, economic expectations on a 6–9-month basis by building on the OECD's leading indicators.

The fund is not benchmarked agnostic but has delivered top quartile returns since inception with a net return above 5.3% p.a. net of fees. The net returns for its IRR are around 3.94%. After deducting 1.1% of the management fee and 0.3% of the custodian fee, the net annual return is about 2.54%. Nevertheless, as an RR2 fund with a 2.54% net annual return, this is still a good investment.

The turnover rate of managers and analysts in the past 12 months is less than 1%, which is better than the industry average. Engagement frequency with investees/potential investees quarterly can be improved.

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