Liontrust SF Corporate Bond Class 6 - Accumulation (GBP)

The Sustainable Future Fixed Income team began managing the fund in August 2012 and since then it's performed broadly in line with peers in the IA £ Corporate Bond sector. Remember, past performance is not a guide to the future.

The fund's exclusions, and a focus on companies making a positive difference, mean we expect the fund to perform differently to its benchmark and peers at times. When the excluded areas are out of favour and their prices fall, the fund could do well. When they perform well, the fund will miss out. We ultimately think the managers have the potential to reward those who are prepared to take a long-term approach, although there are no guarantees.

The fund is part of Liontrust's Sustainable Future range of funds. These funds aim to help create a cleaner, safer and healthier society for the future and generate attractive returns for investors.

The managers believe investing in sustainable companies provides greater return potential, and less risk, than other companies, and that many other investors fail to value the sustainability of a business correctly.

The team's investment process revolves around a quarterly strategic outlook meeting, where the managers form their views on the future direction of economic growth, interest rates and inflation. This helps shape the way they construct the fund, and how much risk they're willing to take. The team also conducts more frequent meetings to review positioning, discuss new opportunities and identify new risks.

Sustainability and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) analysis is fully integrated into the team's investment process. They aim to identify bonds issued by high-quality companies whose core products or services make a positive contribution to society or the environment. This sustainability analysis is completed for every bond issuer in the fund.

The fund also employs negative screening. This means it won't invest in any company that makes more than 5% of its revenues from alcohol, animal testing services, coal, oil & gas, gambling, intensive meat and fish farming, nuclear, ozone depleting substances, pornography, tobacco or weapons systems.

The fund’s managers each have different specialisms. Kenny Watson focuses on telecoms, retail, high yield bonds and overall credit strategy. Aitken Ross looks at insurance, financial services, healthcare and has a focus on portfolio construction. Jack Willis also covers financials and considers how the fund is positioned for interest rate changes. Connor Godsell has joined the team more recently and has a focus on the interest rate strategy and how wider economic trends could impact the fund. There’s a fair degree of coverage overlap, which leads to a good amount of discussion and challenge amongst the team.

The managers have the flexibility to invest in derivatives and emerging markets which, if used, adds risk.

Please note that charges are taken from capital. This might mean that the income paid is higher, but it could also mean that capital growth is reduced.