Skandia UK - Principles and performance

Investing the Skandia way
Understanding investment
- Investment and risk
- Diversifying your investments
- Understanding shares
- Understanding bonds
- Commercial property
- Investment funds
- Multi-manager funds
- Ethical and socially responsible investment
- Absolute return funds

Investors are increasingly keen to balance their desire for investment performance with maintaining a clear conscience – and with a growing choice of ethical investments and changing corporate attitudes there need be little compromise.

Many investment experts now fundamentally believe that investment companies which manage their businesses in the most responsible manner are also likely to see some of the strongest share price performance in future years.

Green performance envy

The myth that, by choosing ethically, you sacrifice returns is being dispelled by the performance of many ethical funds.

Approaches used within ethical funds vary, as do the levels of success they achieve. You need to select an offering which both matches your ethical criteria and also looks well placed to deliver the investment returns you are looking for. After all, even the most ethical investor intends to make money!

There remains a wide degree of divergence between the levels of success achieved by ethical funds, and investment options should be assessed in the same way as other types of investment funds.

Guilt-free returns

The chart below shows an example of how a lump sum of £1,000 would have performed if it had been invested over three, five and ten years across UK and global sectors, and in ethical sectors.

Source: Financial Express Analytics. Figures based on total return bid-bid with any net income invested to 20 August 2010. Rebased in pounds sterling. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.

Remember that stock market based investments should be considered as longer term investments - over a period of 10-15 years market fluctuations even out to produce more favourable returns.