Dutch private equity firm Robeco announced on Monday it has launched the Robeco Global Fintech Equities Fund, which invests in stocks of listed companies that benefit from increasing digitization of the financial sector. Robeco claims it is one of the first asset managers to launch an actively managed fund that only invests in listed fintech companies and which is available to wholesale/retail investors.
“Robeco Global Fintech Equities is a benchmark-agnostic fund and holds a concentrated portfolio of equities. Companies in the proprietary constructed investment universe will be part of one of the three following segments: today’s winners, fintech enablers and challengers. Today’s winners include companies that already have a competitive advantage in this space, fintech enablers include companies that facilitate the digitization trend, and challengers are the companies that could be the future winners. This spread across segments ensures that the fund is diversified over different drivers and risk characteristics.”
Patrick Lemmens, who also manages Robeco New World Financial Equities, and Jeroen van Oerle, are both apart of Robeco’s Trends Investing team are the portfolio managers of the fund. Lemmens stated:
“I have been in the financial industry for almost 25 years, and with my background as trend investor, launching a FinTech fund is the perfect combination of these two aspects. FinTech is something that I have always been very passionate and enthusiastic about. In fact, we have invested in the digital finance trend for over six years now with Robeco New World Financial Equities as this is one of the three themes in that fund, but to launch a fund that solely invests in the FinTech space is very exciting. I strongly believe that digital finance will open the way to 2 billion people who currently don’t manage their financial affairs, and that on-line payment methods will become mainstream, while cash becomes the exception. With the launch of this fund, we enable investors to gain exposure to and profit from the trend of increasing digitization.”
Robeco added that the fund is domiciled in Luxembourg and is after registration available in the company’s key markets according to investor demand.