AXA Investment Managers (AXA IM), part of BNP Paribas Group, launched the AXA WF Defensive European Equity Fund, a defined outcome strategy exposed to the MSCI Europe Climate Paris Aligned Index. The fund is designed to provide a predetermined level of downside protection and limited upside participation over each quarter.
Compared to traditional equity portfolios, the fund aims to reduce volatility for investors by giving a clear outcome of risk and return while ensuring long-term capital growth, by seeking to reduce potential losses on the downside. Each quarter, the protection given by the fund is reset to ensure capital invested is protected against losses between -5% and -20% over the next quarter, providing reduced risk while forgoing some upside over the same period.
The strategy is managed by AXA IM’s structured asset management team, specialized in managing protection overlays and option based solutions for institutional and retail clients, with an average of 20 years of experience.
Lorraine Zafrani, Head of Structured Asset Management at AXA IM, said:
“We are excited to offer a product that not only reduces uncertainty for investors and reduces the downside risk, but also provides them with access to AXA IM’s time-tested expertise in derivatives, usually offered to instutional clients only. Moreover the fund is one of the first of its kind to give a framed exposure to the European market with an actively engaged ESG approach.”
The fund is classified Article 8 under SFDR, and the underlying index on which the strategy is built is the MSCI Europe Climate Paris Aligned Index, which promotes environmental and social responsibility, reflective of the strategy focusing on the climate transition.
The product is avaliable to institutional and retail investors in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. It is not currenlty available to investors in the UK.
