Financial advisers’ favourite funds

See what’s in the playlists of the UK’s financial advisers

Fund research and data firm, FE, works with more than 20 of the UK’s largest adviser firms and asks them to nominate their preferred fund picks. Based on this FE produce a compilation ‘album’ of advisers’ favourite funds. A “Now That’s What I Call Funds”, if you will.

According to their website, “The FE Adviser Fund Index (FE AFI) is made up of the recommended portfolios of a panel of leading UK financial advisers. Based entirely on the funds actually recommended to clients, the FE AFI Aggressive, Balanced, Cautious portfolios carry real-life credibility, and provide insight in terms of the benefits of holding top quality funds.”

They do this across three different categories – Balanced, Aggressive and Cautious. No this is not psychiatric profiling of your exes(!), it’s really based on how much you are prepared to stomach possible short-term losses in the pursuit of longer-term gains.

Would you freak out if your £1,000 turned into £700 – in other words, if your portfolio fell by 30% in any one year? If so, Aggressive is not the place for you and you may be better off looking at the Cautious list of funds.

Here’s the so-called Adviser Fund Index Aggressive Portfolio (https://www.trustnet.com/Tools/AFIIndexSelect.aspx?afiType=Aggressive&ctr=LN). There are 118 funds within this portfolio.

Here’s the Adviser Fund Index Balanced Portfolio (https://www.trustnet.com/Tools/AFIIndexSelect.aspx?afiType=Balanced). This list contains 116 funds.

And finally, here’s the Adviser Fund Index Cautious Portfolio (https://www.trustnet.com/Tools/AFIIndexSelect.aspx?afiType=Cautious&AFISelectTable_sortedColumn=CrownRatingR&AFISelectTable_sortedDirection=DESC) which should make for a slightly smoother ride. This list has 112 funds.

As with all of these things, I wouldn’t take this as absolute gospel, but it’s a very useful sense-check for what are considered mainstream, reputable funds which a lot of professionals use.