Judging panelrationale

Value equities took on a more prominent role in investor portfolios in 2022, and the success of its value equity funds made Robeco win Best Fund Provider – Value Equity.

Founded in 1995, Boston Partners (BP) — Robeco’s sister company — specialises in value equity investing, with a range of market capitalisations and strategies that appeal to clients in Asia. Boston Partners had US$96.3 billion in AUM as of the end of 2021.

Four key value equity strategies gaining traction in Asia in 2022 were Robeco BP Global Premium Equities, Robeco BP US Premium Equities, Robeco BP US Large Cap Equities and Robeco BP US Select Opportunities Equities. These strategies were onboarded by 15 distributors and had captured €90 million of net inflows as of the end of August 2022.

All Boston Partners strategies share an investment philosophy and process, with a centralised research team of fundamental and quantitative analysts supporting the portfolio managers and the firm’s value equity discipline. Its investment process begins with quantitative scoring and screening to cull a target-rich subset universe based on three characteristics — valuation, business fundamentals and business momentum.

Robeco’s value equity strategies all outperformed the benchmark indexes in 2022. For instance, Robeco BP Global Premium Equities is an all-cap global value strategy investing across market capitalisations to wherever stocks meeting the three above characteristics reside. As of the end of 2022, the strategy was a convincing 16.03% ahead of its benchmark, the core MSCI World Index, which was down over 17% in 2022.

The Robeco BP US Large Cap Equities strategy invests in companies with a market capitalisation exceeding US$2 billion. In 2022, the strategy outperformed the Russell 1000 Value Index by 2.96% and outperformed the S&P 500 by over 13.5%.

For these reasons, Robeco wins Best Fund Provider – Value Equity in Asian Private Banker’s 2023 Asset Management Awards for Excellence.