AMIDST stressful 2016 financial year, the high interest rate that ruled money market may have helped Stanbic IBTC Absolute Fund made an 11.5% return for the year ended Dec. 31 2016. This was against backdrop of negative returns in equities during the year.

The company’s asset also increased by almost a corresponding percentage to N5.33 billion.

However, according to the analysis by Quantitative Financial Analytics Ltd, Nigeria’s foremost mutual and pension funds analytics platform, the return under-performs its 2015 performance of 13.19%.

In overall the company’s cumulative or inception to date (ITD) return moved up to 60.73%. This implies that investors who bought into the fund at its initial public offer (IPO) price of N1,500 would have gained N910.9 per unit of the fund as at Dec 31, 2016

Quantitative Financial Analytics further stated that IBTC Absolute Fund has been one of, if not the most consistent mutual fund in Nigeria in terms of performance.

It shows that since January 2013 when Quantitative Analytics started tracking the fund, Stanbic IBTC Absolute Fund has made positive returns month after month except in June 2013 when it recorded a 0.58% negative return. Subsequently, the fund made a return of 10.71% in 2013, 12.62% in 2014 and 13.19% in 2015.

In 2016 the fund suffered a net outflow of about N13.9 million but it generated an estimated gain of N687.5 million same year to take its total net asset value to N5.33 billion from its 2015 ending balance of N4.78 billion. At this figure the Fund is now the 7th largest by assets in Nigeria.

Also the risk return profile is very attractive to investors with a return of 9.35 and risk of 0.53 making it a low risk medium return Fund.

According to the analysts Stanbic IBTC Absolute Fund has a negative correlation of 0.14 to the Nigerian stock market and a Beta of -.01, a Sharpe ratio of -2.27 and R-Squared of .02.

These statistics, according to them,  point to the fact that the Fund is relatively “immune” from the vagaries of the stock market.

The Company is a member of the Stanbic IBTC umbrella funds which includes the Stanbic IBTC Conservative and Stanbic IBTC Aggressive funds.

The investment objective of the Stanbic IBTC Absolute fund is to ensure preservation of capital with minimal risk. Looking at the risk return profile, it does look like the fund’s objective is being realized. The target asset allocation of the Fund is limited to fixed income securities.

The Fund therefore invests 100% of its AUM in Fixed Income securities and is aimed at holding a portfolio of securities with little or no volatility in returns. The fund was debuted at an IPO price of N1,500 and currently trades at N2,487.92