Overview
What's the strategy?
Conservative Portfolio (PSG) is a target risk fund of funds, holding underlying funds that invest in asset classes including Canadian and foreign fixed income, Canadian mortgages, Canadian real estate, and Canadian and foreign equity.
It is constructed to provide strong income, modest growth opportunity, and very low volatility. The strategy has a consideration to inflation protection, a highly diversified fixed income allocation, including government and credit bonds, mortgages, and foreign debt, and a preference for large cap value stocks in the equity allocation.
Why invest in this portfolio strategy?
Ideal for investors seeking a primarily fixed income portfolio with some equity and real estate exposure.
The strategy provides diversification through exposure to multiple asset classes in domestic and foreign markets and multiple active managers.
Investors benefit from tactical asset allocation decisions by the portfolio manager, including changes to the fixed income/equity allocation as well as the domestic/foreign allocation of the funds. The portfolio manager may make changes to the underlying fund mix in line with current forward-looking views on an ongoing basis. In addition, investors benefit from the active management of the underlying fund managers. Investors further benefit from automatic rebalancing, ensuring the asset mix stays close to the desired asset mix.
Portfolio
Portfolio managers
Susan Spence and Brandon Hutchison are the portfolio managers of the Conservative Portfolio (PSG) portfolio strategy and are supported by the Portfolio Solutions Group team. Learn more about the Portfolio Solutions Group investment philosophy and strategy.
Susan Spence
Vice-President
Susan Spence
Vice-President
A member of the Portfolio Solutions team since 2011, Susan is responsible for the entire team and oversees portfolio management of the asset allocation portfolios, including independent screening, selection, due diligence and monitoring of each investment manager and underlying fund component.
Susan joined the Laketon team in 1996, where she held progressively senior roles, most notably co-lead manager for the Canadian Growth equity mandate. Susan also has experience managing U.S. equity mandates and working as a global equity analyst.
Susan holds an honours bachelor of commerce degree from Queen's University and is a CFA charterholder.
Brandon Hutchison
Assistant Vice-President
Brandon Hutchison
Assistant Vice-President
Brandon is co-manager of PSG’s asset allocation portfolio strategies. He is also responsible for independent screening, selection, due diligence and monitoring of each investment manager and underlying fund component. Brandon has been with the PSG team since 2011. He was previously an Assistant Portfolio Analysis Manager with the Great-West Life group of companies. He also worked as a product analyst for Quadrus Investment Services, where he played a key role in creating and implementing the product due diligence process.
Brandon holds an honours bachelor of business administration degree from Brock University and is a CFA charterholder.