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A better way to benefit investors: manager selection and oversight at John Hancock Investments

Posted by on 11 May 2018
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At John Hancock Investments, we employ a global multimanager approach that we believe sets us apart from our peers. Today’s markets require unique talents and expertise on a global scale, and that’s why we’ve spent the past three decades searching the world and building an unrivaled network of proven portfolio teams with specialized expertise for every strategy we offer—we are simply looking for the best managers, regardless of where they are located. Through this effort, we have built one of the industry’s broadest networks of specialized managers, extending from portfolio managers and investment analysts across the U.S. to investment teams based in Europe, Asia, and beyond. Across this elite group of 27 managers and 79 portfolio teams, we apply robust investment oversight to ensure they continue to meet our standards and serve the best interests of our shareholders. The unique diversity of our model, with proven specialists investing in each asset class, enables us to have the breadth of expertise across asset classes that eludes many traditional asset managers.

Unparalleled oversight and risk management capabilities

Our independence and experience as one of the longest-tenured manager of managers enable us to achieve what we believe is an exceptional level of oversight. We have a team of more than 200 professionals who specialize in manager research and oversight, and they vet more than 300 new strategies and hold over 100 in-person oversight meetings with U.S. and non-U.S. managers annually. The team’s deep resources and our organizational experience greatly facilitate research efforts that cover hundreds of investment strategies every year. We get a 360-degree view, meeting directly with portfolio managers and other senior investment leadership at the firms with which we do—or are considering doing—business. In selecting managers, we outline an appropriate set of characteristics we call a performance blueprint—an objective, measurable template for the patterns of risk and return that we expect from a fund through different market conditions.

Passive strategies can achieve market exposure cheaply and efficiently in certain markets. Active strategies can extend the reach of that portfolio and add risk mitigation or performance alpha, depending on the investor’s goals.

This approach is applied across active and passively managed strategies. For more than 25 years, our experience constructing and overseeing multi-asset portfolios has provided us with ample evidence of how complementary active and passive approaches can be. Passive strategies can achieve market exposure cheaply and efficiently in certain markets. Active strategies can extend the reach of that portfolio and add risk mitigation or performance alpha, depending on the investor’s goals.

We believe our unique approach helps investors, advisors, research analysts, and investment consultants in several key ways. First, our rigorous process of thoroughly vetting managers based on investment, compliance, and operational capabilities naturally puts an emphasis on risk management. Second, it provides an alternative for those who may otherwise rely too heavily on historical data to select and oversee investment managers. Finally, we conduct the research of portfolio teams and processes that can help validate the work of industry analysts or that many advisors simply don’t have time for. We believe our approach offers the best of the best and has helped us become a trusted asset management partner of choice.

An approach with broad appeal

Introduced in 1988 and continually refined since then, our approach is designed to marry the innovation, agility, and conviction of boutique managers with the oversight and risk controls of a large, institutional asset manager. Our structure as an independent and well-resourced investment advisor enables us to be forward thinking, to develop funds based on investor need, and then search the world to find the portfolio management teams with the best skill set, track record, and experience to manage those funds. We have applied this approach across a wide range of platforms and asset classes, and we launched our UCITS platform in June 2015, making available a selection of John Hancock Investments’ highly rated investment strategies to non-U.S. residents and UCITS model programs of the firm’s U.S. distribution partners. Across the company, we manage nearly $155 billion, with assets in U.S. open-end mutual funds, closed-end funds, exchange-traded funds, UCITS products, and separately managed accounts. Our approach has led to a diverse set of investments deeply rooted in investor needs, along with strong risk-adjusted returns across asset classes.

John Hancock Investments will be at the world's premier investment management event in Berlin 11-13 June. Find out more >>

All data is as of 31/03/2018. 

© 2018 John Hancock Funds, LLC and affiliated companies. All rights reserved. Member FINRA.

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