Capital Group Launches Multi-Sector Income Fund
Capital Group, a Los Angeles-based investment management firm overseeing $365 billion in fixed-income assets, has rolled out a new fixed-income fund.

The American Funds Multi-Sector Income Fund invests across four sectors in the credit spectrum: high-yield corporates, investment-grade corporates, emerging markets and securitized debt. It also may use up to 20% of assets under management to invest opportunistically in other fixed-income securities, including U.S. government debt, municipal debt and non-corporate credit.

Damien McCann, Kirstie Spence, Scott Sykes, Shannon Ward and Vince Gonzales will be managing the new Multi-Sector Income Fund, which will be benchmarked against the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Aggregate Index.

Mike Gitlin, head of fixed income at Capital Group, said the firm began designing its Multi-Sector Income Fund in September 2018 with the intention of meeting investor demand for a bond fund that could consistently generate income with lower volatility through an entire market cycle.

Capital Group had $1.7 trillion in equity and fixed-income assets under management as of March 31, 2020.

Transamerica Introduces Low-Cost Variable Annuity
Transamerica, a Baltimore-based subsidiary of Aegon, has released a low-cost variable annuity.

The Transamerica Advisory Annuity, offered and issued by Transamerica Life Insurance Company, offers policyholders a selection of 26 diverse investment options, including 18 portfolios managed by Vanguard and eight portfolios managed by Dimensional Fund Advisors. Policy owners can choose among investment portfolios, including seven index portfolios, that generally invest in stocks, bonds, money market instruments or a combination of the three.

There are added advantages to the new annuity, which is available at reduced annual fees, compared with Morningstar industry averages, according to Transamerica, as well as a choice of death benefits: the policy value, with no surrender charges, or a return of premium.

Based in the Netherlands, Aegon is one of the world’s largest providers of life insurance, pension solutions and asset management products, operating in more than 20 markets worldwide.

HiddenLevers Debuts Stress-Testing For Retirement Plans
HiddenLevers, a financial technology company based in Atlanta, has added new financial planning features to its platform that will help financial advisors respond to client concerns about the Covid-19 pandemic’s economic impact on their retirement investments.

The new feature set includes cash-flow stress testing. Advisors can use the platform to show clients a range of possible scenarios affecting their retirement portfolio, from benign to catastrophic, that anticipate, among other things, a global recession and a low interest rate environment.

Users can also deliver investment proposals as an interactive presentation with e-signature, which is well-suited to the current work-from-home environment many firms have adopted in response to the pandemic.

RetireOne Partners With Halo To Add Structured Notes To Platform
RetireOne, a Chicago-based independent platform for fee-based insurance solutions, has partnered with Halo Investments, a San Francisco-based platform for structured investment products.

A structured note is a hybrid security that helps an investor target a level of expected returns and protection levels over a set period of time. Issued by major financial institutions, these instruments aim to generate returns in up, down and flat markets.

Current low interest rates are pressuring RIAs to look beyond traditional fixed income for risk-off solutions, both companies said. Structured notes are a global investment product with more than $3 trillion of assets. But they are a relatively small part of the domestic market at just over $60 billion. Halo and RetireOne believe that, given recent market swings, low-cost structured notes have earned a place in client portfolios.

Using Halo’s structured-note trading platform, RetireOne’s RIA partners can now choose curated structured notes, or they can design, price and bid out custom-built solutions. The partnership also provides clients of RIA partners with the portfolio protections they want and need, but could not previously afford or did not have available to them.

The partnership is expected to help both firms grow distribution among some of the largest RIA firms in the United States.

Driehaus Launches Small-And Mid-Cap Growth Fund
Driehaus Capital Management, a Chicago-based independent boutique investment advisor founded in 1982, has launched a new small/mid-cap growth fund.

Lead portfolio manager Jeff James, portfolio manager Michael Buck, and assistant portfolio manager Prakash Vijayan will manage the firm’s new Driehaus Small/Mid Cap Growth Fund. James, Buck and Vijayan also manage the Driehaus Micro Cap Growth and Driehaus Small Cap Growth strategies and mutual funds.

Driehaus manages active growth equity strategies and alternative investment strategies for a diverse institutional client base of global corporate and public pensions, endowments, foundations, subadvisors, family offices, wealth managers and financial advisors.