Rathbones launches new fund to help meet the evolving needs of Charities

Rathbones, one of the UK’s leading wealth and asset management groups, is pleased to announce the launch of the Rathbones Charity Growth & Income Fund, a new Charity Authorised Investment Fund (CAIF) designed to help trustees balance the funding of current charitable activities while safeguarding capital for the future.

The fund joins Rathbones’ wider offering to charities, providing an institutional multi-asset investment solution which aims to deliver long-term growth, reliable income and responsible stewardship.

The new fund is actively managed by Charity Fund Manager James Ayre, within Rathbones’ specialist multi-asset team, led by Head of Multi-Asset Investments, David Coombs, bringing together decades of experience in constructing resilient multi-asset portfolios for institutional clients.

James Ayre, Charity Fund Manager, said: “Trustees tell us their biggest challenge is balancing certainty of income with the responsibility to protect reserves. This fund is designed to give them confidence in both – delivering today’s spending power while growing capital for tomorrow.

“By combining Rathbones’ heritage in charity investing with our proven multi-asset expertise, we’ve built a flexible solution tailored to the evolving needs of today’s charities.”

The fund invests across equities, bonds and diversifiers including alternatives, which can help to smooth performance through market cycles.  It targets long-term capital growth of Consumer Price Index +4% alongside a planned annual distribution of 3% to offer trustees cashflow to support budgeting and ongoing expenditure, while maintaining the spending power of capital in real terms. The fund adopts a total return approach, which is designed to reduce reliance on income-only strategies and help preserve reserves over time.

David Coombs, Head of Multi-Asset Investments, said: “Charities need investment partners who understand that capital has to be resilient across cycles as well as productive in the long term. The new CAIF, run by James, will benefit from the strength of our multi-asset approach, which is designed precisely for that balance – drawing on a wide range of asset classes to help smooth volatility, protect reserves and support sustainable distributions.

“The CAIF allows us to apply that discipline in a structure built specifically for the sector, reflecting our long heritage and deep understanding of managing charity portfolios."

Responsible investment is fully embedded, with environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors integrated into every investment decision. Rathbones’ stewardship team will engage and vote on behalf of investors to drive positive change. The new fund will draw on the multi-asset team’s experience of managing sustainable multi-asset portfolios, having launched a range of four Rathbone Greenbank Multi-Asset Portfolios in 2021, which have since adopted the Sustainability Focus label under Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (SDR).

Rathbones has been managing money for charities for more than 100 years and supports more than 3,000 organisations nationwide, with portfolios ranging from £10,000 to more than £100 million.