According to Lion Global Investors, for the first time, retail investors can now participate in the growth of these disruptive companies through investing in a new vehicle.

Newly launched by Lion Global Investors (LGI), the Lion Global Disruptive Innovation Fund is the first easily-accessible fund in Singapore that invests in disruptive innovators, defined as «companies that change the traditional way an industry operates, especially in a new and effective way».

«We are so consumed by the effectiveness of a new tool or a new service that we forget to ask ourselves, ‘Can I benefit from this financially?’» says Gerard Lee, LGI’s Chief Executive Officer. He adds: «As users and adopters of these innovations, we should be actively looking at how we could also participate in the growth of these companies.» Lion Global Investors is a member of the Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) Group

Three Disruptive Forces

Designed to be a fund that is passively managed, the Fund’s investment universe comprises approximately 300 to 500 disruptive innovators, broadly classified according to the three disruptive forces of which their areas of business represent:

  • Software Innovation, which includes digital shopping, user-sharing
  • Breakthroughs, which includes artificial intelligence, big data and analytics
  • Hardware Innovation, which includes automation, self-driving cars. It is worth noting that the investable universe includes only companies that challenge existing business models and whose innovative ideas have been proven and commercialised.

To ensure that the portfolio is practical to manage and the Fund has sufficient diversification, the investment universe is further reduced to an «index» of 100 stocks using a five-factor screening process.

One of the Largest Asset Managers in Southeast Asia

These five factors are, namely: market capitalisation, volatility, sales growth, earnings-per-share growth and price-to-sales ratio. These factors are equally weighted, similar to some other factor-based investing approaches.

Lion Global Investors, established in 1986, is one of the largest asset management companies in Southeast Asia, with group assets under management of S$42.5 billion ($29.4 billion) as at 31 December 2016.