GK enters mutual funds market
Published:Wednesday | March 8, 2023 | 12:35 AM
GK Mutual Funds, GKMF, launched three mutual fund products on Monday, one of which is priced in the greenback and the others in Jamaican currency.
GKMF is a joint venture between GraceKennedy Financial Group and the Trinidad and Tobago Unit Trust Corporation, TTUTC, each holding 50 per cent interest.
The partners are seeding the funds with US$20 million.
The GK US Dollar Income Fund requires starter investment of US$1,000 from mutual fund investors, while for the GK Jamaican Dollar Money Market Fund and the GK Jamaican Dollar Growth & Income Fund the starter is $15,000.
Deputy CEO of GK Financial Group Steven Whittingham said the value of collective investment schemes, as mutual funds and unit trusts are categorised, was $309 billion as of December 2022.
However, the most recent official data produced by the Financial Services Commission dates to September 2022. Then the FSC said the collective investment schemes market, had nine active unit trust managers and one mutual funds manager, overseeing assets valued at $344 billion in 19 funds, the vast majority of which which is unit trust investments. It translated to around US$2 billion, and included the US$247.6 million invested by Jamaicans in three overseas mutual funds registered with the FSC.
At Monday’s launch, Executive Director of the TTUTC, Nigel Edwards, said that the value of assets under management at his firm stood at US$3.7 billion as of last September, adding that it was twice the size of the total Jamaican market, and represented the investments of over 627,000 unitholders.
Speaking after the launch, Whittingham said the GK mutual funds were first conceptualised in 2017, and developed over the past two years.