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MLC’s innovative three-part investment process has proven its effectiveness since its introduction in 1985

1. We use a range of the world's best investment management companies

At MLC, we believe that no single investment manager will be the best performer in all asset classes or all markets all of the time. For this reason, we have created an investment process that provides your clients with access to a combination of specialist investment managers in each asset class.

Every investment manager we use has a clearly defined investment style a discernable and sustainable competitive edge.

Building and maintaining the right combination of specialist investment styles and managers requires significant resources. At MLC, we have a dedicated team of in-house investment professionals constantly researching, monitoring and managing a dynamic combination of specialist investment managers.

Every investment manager we appoint is subject to a rigorous selection process and ongoing monitoring and review, with the aim that the overall combination of investment managers continues to deliver to our expectations for each Fund.

2. We diversify your clients portfolio in three important ways*

Diversifying your client’s portfolio helps to reduce the volatility of investment returns. MLC's multi-manager investment process gives your client’s broad diversification at many levels.

Diversification across asset classes
The major asset classes – shares, property and bonds - perform differently under different economic and market conditions. The MLC Investment Process diversifies your clients investment across a broad range of asset classes to capture the benefits of strong returns over the long term and reduce the impact of downward fluctuations in any one asset class over the short term.

Diversification within asset classes
The MLC multi-manager investment process also spreads the underlying investments within each asset class across a wide range of countries, currencies, industries and/or stocks. Our global approach to investing ensures that your investment is not narrowly concentrated in a particular region or industry, and helps to reduce the impact of a regional or industry downturn.

Diversification across investment management styles
Different investment management styles also tend to excel at different times under different economic and market conditions. The aim of the MLC investment process is to combine a range of investment managers with complementary investment styles. We use sophisticated techniques to avoid unintended style bias to any one style in each asset class, and to ensure that diversification of management styles actually results in diversification of underlying investments.

3. We take a strategic long term view

At MLC, we believe that trying to forecast and capture short term market movements is, in practice, unreliable and unlikely to add value to your client’s investment over the long term.

As a result, we use a more strategic approach, setting long term target weightings for each asset class, investment style and investment manager. These target weightings take into account the long term relationship between the various asset classes and investment management styles, as well as the investment objective for each Fund.

We don't make short term, tactical changes to these target weightings. Instead, we use a disciplined rebalancing procedure to maintain the integrity of the process and ensure the exposure to the various asset classes and investment managers reflects their long term targets.

This strategic long term view is not to be confused with the positions taken by each of our specialist investment managers within each asset class. The specialist investment managers we employ take active positions in accordance with their investment style, changing exposures to countries, industries and stocks in order to increase returns or provide a defence against downward price movements.

* Diversification across asset classes and/or across investment management styles may not apply to all MLC funds.

Do you want to find out more about each of our specialist investment managers? Click here