A new suite of segregated fund portfolios offering principal guarantees and other benefits for same costs as most mutual fund portfolio programs is now available to Canadian investors.

The manufacturers of the PRO-SSQ Guaranteed Investment Portfolios say the product offers conservative to aggressive investors the benefits of seg fund at mutual fund prices.

“Pro-Financial has been a leader in the distribution of Fundamental Index mutual funds in Canada for almost three years. Now we are offering principal guarantees, and the taxation benefits of segregated funds to our line-up” says Stuart McKinnon, president and CEO of Oakville, Ont.-based Pro-Financial Asset Management.

“We are pleased to be partnering with SSQ Financial Group on this endeavour. SSQ has been providing insurance services in Canada since 1946 and we are excited to be offering the investment management services for all equity exposure on these new portfolios.”

There will be four portfolio choices available; Conservative, Balanced, Growth and Aggressive. The four choices offer one-stop investment choices with quarterly rebalancing, complete global exposure, and varying degrees of equity exposure to suit the main investor risk profiles.

Adds McKinnon, “The primary advantages of segregated funds over mutual funds are as follows: segregated funds offer principal protection, death benefit guarantees, they can provide possible creditor-protection, and can bypass probate. This normally comes with a premium price over mutual funds, but since our portfolios are 100% indexed you’ll note that the all-in MERs on these segregated fund portfolios are in the range of traditional mutual fund portfolio programs. Essentially, for the same costs, investors can now get these added benefits over their mutual fund portfolio funds.”

Preet Banerjee, senior vice president adds, “We feel that the specific type of index we track, the Fundamental Index, is more investor friendly, too. The Fundamental Index avoids the return drag of a cap-weighted index, which will assign the most weight to the highest priced stocks.”

“For the 2009 calendar year, the PRO FTSE RAFI Canadian Index Fund (Class F Units) returned 42.86% while the S&P/TSX Composite (Total Return) Index returned 35.05%. That represents an outperformance of 7.81%,” Banerjee concludes.

The following four portfolio seg funds are now available:

• PRO-SSQ Conservative Fundamental Equity GIF Portfolio, 60% fixed income /40% equity exposure, 2.47% MER;

• PRO-SSQ Balanced Fundamental Equity GIF Portfolio, 40% fixed income / 60% equity exposure, 2.52% MER

• PRO-SSQ Growth Fundamental Equity GIF Portfolio, 30% fixed income / 70% equity exposure, 2.57% MER; and

• PRO-SSQ Aggressive Fundamental Equity GIF Portfolio, 20% fixed income / 80% equity exposure, 2.63% MER.

IE