Addition of PineStone to the Core investment platform
Plan sponsors may wish to consider whether this investment news has any implications for the investment options available within their plans. Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada purchases units of the funds listed below, which are established as segregated funds in accordance with the Insurance Companies Act (Canada).
We’re pleased to announce the addition of three PineStone Asset Management Inc. (PineStone) funds to the Core investment platform. They include the PineStone U.S. Equity, PineStone International Equity and PineStone Global Equity Segregated Funds. The Funds will be available effective August 1, 2024.
About the PineStone U.S. Equity Segregated Fund
PineStone U.S. Equity strategy aims to achieve long-term total returns, through capital appreciation and distribution income. The fund attempts to do this by investing in a well-diversified portfolio of high-quality companies in the U.S. equity markets. The fund targets between 20 and 35 issuers. The benchmark for the fund is the S&P 500 Index.
About the PineStone International Equity Segregated Fund
PineStone International Equity strategy aims to achieve long-term total returns, through capital appreciation and distribution income. The fund attempts to do this by investing in a well-diversified portfolio of high-quality companies generally across world equity markets, excluding the United States. The fund targets between 25 and 40 issuers. The benchmark for the fund is the MSCI EAFE Index.
About the PineStone Global Equity Segregated Fund
PineStone Global Equity strategy aims to achieve long-term total returns, through capital appreciation and distribution income. The fund attempts to do this by investing in a well-diversified portfolio of high-quality companies across world equity markets. The fund targets between 25 and 40 issuers. The benchmark for the fund is the MSCI World Index.
About PineStone
Nadim Rizk founded PineStone in March 2021. He is the long-standing portfolio manager of Fiera’s U.S, international and global equity funds. All members of Rizk’s investment team at Fiera joined PineStone at inception. PineStone is 100% employee owned and manages CAD$22.4 billion in assets as of March 2024.
PineStone continues to be the sub-advisor on the Fiera Global Equity, International Equity and US Equity funds.
The PineStone investment team has historically experienced strong staff retention and low personnel turnover dating back to their time at Fiera. All members who joined at PineStone’s inception remain with the team. Nadim Rizk has begun to transfer equity ownership to other team members.
The strategies managed by PineStone are best described as high conviction, concentrated and benchmark agnostic. The funds utilize a bottom-up, growth at a reasonable price (GARP) style and focus on all cap (with a large cap bias). The funds will typically exhibit a relatively high active share. PineStone integrates ESG considerations into security valuation as part of the investment process and the team conducts its own ESG research. PineStone does not use negative screening.
We do not have capacity constraints with the new PineStone funds for the time being.
A note about Fiera funds
Sun Life’s Core investment platform will continue to offer and govern the three Fiera funds currently sub-advised by PineStone, namely Fiera U.S. Equity, Fiera International Equity and Fiera Global Equity funds, for the foreseeable future. In March 2021, due to Fiera’s capacity restrictions, we stopped offering the Fiera Global Equity fund to Clients who did not already offer the fund.
Do you have to take any action?
You don’t need to take any action. You may consider whether the new funds would be a suitable addition to your lineup.
Questions?
Please contact your Sun Life Group Retirement Services representative.