Stanbic Investments applauds SA counterpart

WANETSHA MOSINYI
Staff Writer | Tuesday February 19, 2008 00:00

 

As South Africa's top unit trust wealth creator, Stanlib was crowned with the Raging Bull Award as the country's top unit trust wealth creator.The Johannesburg-based asset manager has R77.5 billion unit trusts in assets under its management.The Raging Bull Award is given to the best domestic unit trust management company. The Raging Bulls are to South Africa's asset management sector what the Oscars are to Hollywood.
Stanlib's also won additional Raging Bull awards in nine different investment categories.Commenting on the award, Botswana's Stanbic Investment Development Manager, Thabo Moipolai, said because they get technical support from Stanlib, it basically means that they get support from one of the finest asset managers in the industry.

'It also makes us proud to have a shareholder who does well in product development and management,' Moipolai said. 'Their success is our success.'

He said another area of cooperation with Stanlib is the support they give each other as businesses, allowing Stanbic Investments clients in Botswana to access Stanlib unit trust products, giving them a wider choice in placing their investments.

However, Moipolai said their unit trust offerings are different because of different geographic client-centric approaches.Stanbic Investments currently has three unit trust products in Botswana, namely, Stanbic Money Market Fund, Stanbic Managed Prudential Fund and Stanbic Equity Fund. Moipolai said the unit trusts were designed looking at the needs of clients locally.'That basically  means we are offering low, moderate and high risk funds for clients to invest in.' 

The company is committed to bringing more products to the market to give clients more choice in domestic unit trust offerings. Stanbic Investments recently opened an office on Francistown's Blue Jacket Square. Moipolai said the response from Batswana in placing their funds with them has been overwhelming. 'This type of response is commended, more so that Batswana have historically been low savers.'Both Stanbic Investments and Stanlib are subsidiaries of the Standard Bank Group, which operates locally as Stanbic Bank.