The 2023 Charity Finance Pooled Funds Survey covers 49 funds that are exclusively for charitable organisations, with combined funds under management of £23.1bn. While there have been no new product launches in the last year, six funds listed in 2022 have closed or are about to. The CAF UK Equitrack Fund closed on 27 April 2023 and funds are being returned to investors. CAF Financial Solutions Limited (CFSL) has decided to focus its attention on the three IFSL funds managed by abrdn, as it believes these offer a “compelling solution to the increasing number of charity investors that are asking for multi-asset funds with environmental, social and governance filters”.

Epworth terminated its relatively new Corporate Bond Fund for Charities, and Sterling Sovereign Bond Fund for Charities, at the end of April, while Cazenove shut its 25- year old Charity Bond Fund in May. Co-head of charities at Cazenove, Tom Montagu-Pollock, said the fund was small and had not grown in some time. “We carefully considered various options to try and restructure with a view to growth but decided to close it. This illustrates that charities have increasingly moved to a pooled multi-asset approach, rather than using single asset class funds, in the past decade. You can also look at the UK equity charity fund universe of ten funds, they have fallen by 43% on average in value since 2019 and you would imagine this trend in moving to pooled multi-asset approaches is likely to continue.”