HEAD-TO-HEAD: Allianz versus Schroders

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Investment Approach

Both funds adopt a bottom-up strategy and are benchmark agnostic, which leaves them without formal limits on sector and country allocations.

The Schroders fund is a bit more concentrated with 41 holdings as of September compared with 55 for Allianz, although neither are particularly concentrated compared with similar funds.

Both funds target growth stocks with the Allianz fund focused on stocks that can deliver structurally above-average earnings and cash flow growth that the market has not yet priced into a company’s valuation.

The Schroders fund is a little bit less ‘growthy’ and has more leeway to invest in cyclical growth stocks. It also has more of an ESG tilt and each idea put forward by the team of analysts is scrutinised by the Sustainable Growth Investor Group on ESG grounds before it can be added to a watchlist from which the co-managers are able to make their stock selections.

On a country basis, both funds are relatively underweight US stocks compared to the benchmark, with Allianz having a 60.9% weighting towards the US and Schroders having a 50.8% weighting. Van Genderen attributed this to Allianz’s strong European heritage and also the fact that Schroders is a bit more valuation aware.

In terms of sector allocation, in keeping with the more valuation aware theme, the Schroders fund is underweight technology and consumer discretionary stocks at 21% and 10.3% respectively. It has no holdings in a number of behemoths such as Apple, Amazon and Tesla.

In contrast, Allianz has a 36.3% and 15% weighting towards technology and consumer discretionary stocks respectively, although what is most noticeable is that both the Allianz fund and the Schroders fund at 12% and 19% respectively are significantly overweight financials. The Schroders fund has more of an exposure to banking stocks given it is less ‘growthy’ compared with Allianz.

Fund characteristics

Sector allocation:

Source: Fund factsheets, October 2022

Country allocation:

Source: Fund factsheets, October 2022

Top 5 holdings:

Source: Fund factsheets, October 2022

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