GRAYSWAN

TRULY INDEPENDENT

 

Consulting Services

Our investment consulting offering includes a comprehensive range of specialised services. We tailor make our offering according to any client’s specific needs.

Umbrella Funds

Our range of Funds consists of local & offshore actively & passively managed Unit Trusts, Exchange Traded Funds, Exchange Traded Notes and Structured Products.

Client Testimonials

Our brand is what others say when we are not in the room. Our clients are the ambassadors of our business, and our business has been built primarily on word of mouth.

GraySwan offers institutional investors the freedom to access investment quality.

We provide objective, transparent, high conviction and measurable value add investment consulting services in order to help institutional investors be the best in their industry. We believe the following factors set us apart from the crowd: our independence, our history of investment management experience, our stable team, our superior service ethos, our propriety research, and our long-term superior institutional track record.

Our investment consulting offering includes a comprehensive range of specialised services. Every client is different and we tailor-make our advice to fit their needs.

INVESTMENT CONSULTING SERVICES

INVESTMENT STRATEGY

As part of our best advice framework, we empower our clients to implement a variety of investment strategies, ranging from balanced strategies to specialist mandates to liability-driven investment strategies and we include both actively managed and passively managed strategies.

MANAGER SELECTION

Our unique investment manager research and selection offering centres around a deep understanding of the investment management industry, which we have gained over the past two decades. We have gained our competitive edge not only from our wealth of investment consulting experience where we advised to most of the largest institutional investors in South Africa but also from our offshore investment management backgrounds.

RISK MANAGEMENT

Investment markets are unpredictable in the short term and may deviate from what is expected. Hedging is a risk reduction or risk management strategy and can add significant value to any investment strategy. Hedging is a complementing strategy to other portfolios management techniques such as strategic and tactical asset allocation, diversification and ongoing rebalancing.

PERFORMANCE MONITORING

We empower investors to track their performance, the sources of returns and the risk taken to achieve such outcomes relative to the selected investment strategy, asset class benchmarks as well as institutional and retail peergroups. We provide transparency and meaning in the numbers to better equip decision-makers to manage their investment programme optimally.

TRUSTEE TRAINING

Trustees need to empower themselves with adequate knowledge in order to make responsible investment decisions confidently. We tailor-make our training workshops and interactive sessions for Trustees and investors. The two consultants who provide Trustee Training Services have more than 40 years of investment experience and have consulted to most of the largest and most prestigious funds in South Africa.

ESG INVESTING

We guide our institutional clients towards a deeper understanding of ESG. Our clients follow tailor-made ESG strategies that work. We implement such via a standalone Responsible Investment Policy, and we monitor the effectiveness via our proprietary ESG ScoreCard Reports.

CONSULTING TO EMPLOYERS OF

UMBRELLA FUNDS

There are numerous aspects to evaluate before making a final decision on the most suitable umbrella fund provider. There is no one best answer for all employers. It is crucial to ensure that the umbrella fund provider you finally choose addresses all of your company’s requirements and that it can be tailored according to your specific needs.

Our advisors can assist you to select the most suitable umbrella fund provider after which we can assist to implement a best practice pre and post-retirement investment strategy.

GRAYSWAN LAUNCHES

UMBRELLA FUND DEFAULT INVESTMENT SURVEY

We bring you a survey that offers an objective, transparent and institutionalised investment approach to empower decision-makers such as trustees, employee benefits consultants, financial advisors, and employers to understand better the various Default Investment options offered by Umbrella Funds in South Africa.

RESEARCH AND VIDEOS

Research is the foundation of every investment opportunity. With access to futurists, global experts and data-driven research, we are able to generate powerful insights that guide our diversification strategies and uncover investing opportunities.

IT IS THE FREEDOM TO CONFIDENTLY EXPLORE

CLIENT
TESTIMONIALS

“I joined the Fund as Principal Officer in July 2015 which was a little less than a year after GraySwan was appointed as the Fund’s asset consultants. They had already assisted the Board in successfully implementing both the liability driven investment (LDI) strategy for our defined benefit pensioners. GraySwan assisted the Board in a due diligence exercise that culminated in the Fund having changed its custodian. This has been to the benefit of the Fund. They very recently also assisted us by completing a due diligence exercise and project managing our change in investment unitisation service provider. We pride ourselves on being forward thinking when it comes to responsible investing; having been one of the first retirement funds in South Africa to have become a UNPRI signatory in 2016. The Fund could not have found a better partner in this drive – GraySwan is just as committed in this endeavour, and they recently found an appropriate service provider to produce a quarterly carbon footprint and ESG report for the Fund. I have no hesitation in recommending the appointment of GraySwan.”

“The reporting service of GraySwan is unparalleled in the industry.  Innovations were implemented of your own accord.  When prospective new investment managers made presentations to the Fund, it was often proved that you had more knowledge of their history than the presenters. Consistent evaluation of investment managers was done and acted upon even when changes in teams dealing with our mandates were not reported by the relevant investment manager to the Fund.”

Through GraySwan’s high standard of ethics and being independent from all investment managers, the Fund has always had the benefit of receiving unbiased advice regarding its investments and undivided loyalty towards the Fund. Insofar as prospective new investment managers are concerned, this unbiased view has uncovered matters not mentioned by these investment managers during presentations to the Fund, which can then be raised with them. Regarding existing investment managers, regular independent evaluation is very important as they are consistently undergoing changes or need to explain why they acted in a certain manner.