Major super fund seeds emerging markets strategy

RQI Investors has launched the RQI Emerging Markets Diversified Alpha Fund (the Fund) backed by seed investment from a major Australian super fund, reflecting increasing demand for the firm’s quantitative investment capabilities.

Leveraging the team’s 15-year track record in emerging markets equities, the strategy draws on a wide range of data sources to identify alpha opportunities while maintaining a strong focus on risk management. It aims to deliver long-term capital growth and income whilst aiming to outperform the MSCI Emerging Markets Index by 2% p.a. with similar risk levels over the long term.

The strategy expands RQI Investors’ existing Diversified Alpha suite of funds, including the recently launched Global Diversified Alpha Fund which received a Lonsec ‘Highly Recommended’ rating, and are available to investors in Australia and globally.

The launch follows the award of several new mandates globally in 2026, further demonstrating confidence in RQI Investors’ systematic investment approach and creating further growth opportunities for the business.

Andrew Francis, Chief Executive of RQI Investors said: “The decision by a major client to seed our Emerging Markets Diversified Alpha strategy, together with the award of new mandates, are strong endorsements of our investment capabilities and reflect growing recognition of the value that quantitative investing can bring to client portfolios.

“We are seeing strong interest across client segments and markets off the back of our strong long-term track records across our strategies, creating opportunities for us to work with clients on capabilities that match their needs, expand our product offering, and position our business for long-term growth, whilst remaining laser focused on delivering our performance objectives.”

Strengthening capabilities with four key hires

RQI Investors has also appointed four investment and research professionals, bringing its team to 25 professionals, as it continues to invest in its capabilities to continue to deliver long-term outperformance for clients and support future growth. These include:

• John Conomos joins as Investment Director, supporting client engagement, consultant relationships, product development and thought leadership. He previously served as Head of Global Quantitative Research at Macquarie Group. 
• Dr Chang Hwan Sung joins as Senior Quantitative Portfolio Manager with responsibilities across RQI Investors’ Global Value and Diversified Alpha strategies. He previously held several senior portfolio management and quantitative investment roles at Invesco, BlackRock and Samsung Asset Management.
• Sam Machen joins as Quantitative Research Developer. Mr Machen previously held a number of quantitative modelling and software engineering roles at Jacobi.
• James Sutherland joins as Quantitative Researcher. Previously, Mr Sutherland was a Quant Trader Developer at Tibra Capital specialising in global futures and equities.

Commenting on the appointments, Mr Francis said: “I’m pleased to welcome John, Chang Hwan, Sam and James to RQI Investors. These appointments deepen our investment and research capabilities, and reflect our continued commitment to innovation, strategy development and strong client outcomes. As we continue to grow, having exceptional talent across the business is critical to supporting our clients and focussing on delivering our performance objectives.”

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James Sutherland

American portfolio crash-testing company, RiXtrema, has announced signing an exclusivity agreement and Memorandum of Understanding with a team of Australian wealth management experts led by James Sutherland, Founder and CEO of myonlineadvisers. The joint venture, unnamed at this time, is focused on empowering wealth advisers with online tools which will not only improve efficiency, but also help them to grow their practice and protect future revenue.

“Until now, robo advice platforms have been seen as the enemy of planning community because they could see customers opting out in favour of low-cost online advice solutions”, said Mr Sutherland. “Now planners will be able to leverage the growing client appetite for efficient online support to their firm’s advantage also. Ultimately we believe this simple plug-in will enable planners to provide better, more efficient service to more clients, allowing them to increase their accounts under management and drive revenue.”

Long used by fund managers, pension plans and funds of funds, RiXtrema has successfully introduced its risk management tools to the wealth management community in the USA and beyond to help ensure clients get the analysis and advice they need. Now a customised Australian version of both RiXtrema & Advisor BioniX will be launched to the independent financial advice market early in 2016.

“It makes good sense to integrate RiXtrema and Advisor Bionix into a wealth firm’s client engagement model. The planner saves time on paperwork and account management yet the ongoing automatic reconciliations will deliver even greater value to their clients. Everyone wins. It is online, proactive and robust.”

Rixtrema has been operating since 2010. Since then their portfolio management & crash-testing engine has been employed by some of the top fund managers and financial advisory firms worldwide, including the Stockholm-based Nobel Foundation. At the Foundation the RiXtrema risk model is employed to protect the endowment of Alfred Nobel, ensuring the continued ability to fund future Nobel Prizes.

This experience enabled the refinement of the Rixtrema portfolio builder and crash testing technology specifically for financial advice firms. Now planners can integrate these tools into their own platform, delivering best-of-breed client investment portfolios and proactively manage return expectations.

These tools give planners bandwidth by simplifying portfolio management and basic client interaction through automation. A key differentiator is the inclusion of basic financial planning questions on top of the standard online risk tolerance assessment. Both sources of information are collated and drawn upon in determining the optimal portfolio for the investor. These portfolios are based on a set of approved investments using a specific AFSL’s approved product list.

The information generated over time can ultimately be used by advisers as they prepare customised financial plans and, when the time is right, seek to convert clients from the online service to for-fee services. All this is done via a simple interactive web page which clients can use on any device.

“These are all exciting pieces of the puzzle”, said James Sutherland. “Advisers can now create a unique and differentiated investment offering, whilst taking advantage of low cost automation. We think this will sit well with ASIC as it takes modern portfolio theory to a whole new level and recognizes that no one size fits all. It will also deepen the value of the adviser’s customer engagement.”

RiXtrema President, Daniel Satchkov, said, “We weren’t actually looking at the Australian market. Yet the powerful team James has created combined with the clear opportunities in the Australian market formed a compelling argument. We saw a great opportunity to swing our resources towards creating an offering for the Australia advice community. We are fully committed to making sure our Advisor BioniX automation technology works within the confines of the Australian regulatory framework and James makes this much easier for us.”

Robo advice platforms have made low cost, easy access, online financial advice available to price sensitive customers around the world. Now, for the first time, Australian advisers will be able to integrate one of the world’s leading robo advice platforms into their business. Clients will still benefit from greater ease and efficiency, but under the expert guidance of the planning community.

Mr Sutherland finished with the statement “Our goal is to make it easier for advisers to give good advice to every day Australians at a price they can both afford.”

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