UK - Scottish Widows and Frank Russell have announced a strategic alliance to offer a ‘best of breed’ multi-manager investment programme to UK personal investors.

The new co-branded product will be available early next year and will use specialist managers, many of whom are currently accessible only to the largest institutional investors in the UK.

The new programme brings together over 50 investment managers into multi-manager portfolios, ranging from well-known organisations such as Fidelity, JP Morgan, Schroders and Putnam, to firms that will be less familiar to UK investors such as Peachtree, Jacobs Levy and Oppenheim Capital.

The new multi-manager investment programme will be available to all Scottish Widows customers through its core range of life, pensions and investment products.

Mike Ross, chief executive at Scottish Widows comments:
“We are delighted to join in this strategic alliance with Russell to offer our customers a truly independent multi-manager selection, covering the best fund managers throughout the world. As a result, Scottish Widows will be able to offer an unrivalled range of premier investment options encompassing both self-select single manager solutions and independently managed multi-manager solutions.”