Systematic equity beta

Experience and capabilities

Deep experience meets ETFs

For over 20 years, our professionals have built a reputation by delivering custom index-based solutions with a focus on research, discipline and efficient execution. This focus has led to over $52.7 billion in retail and institutional assets under management for clients across Canada, the U.S. and Asia.¹

A focused perspective

Research and a rigorous process that drive core functions which lead to client-focused investment solutions.

• Quantitative research
• Equity market research
• Dividend screening
• Factor optimization
• Efficient trading

Investment management team

Operating efficiently, and maintaining a disciplined and repeatable process, is at the core of what the team does. Here are the investment professionals behind the process.

Serge Lapierre, FSA, FCIA

Head of Liability-Driven Investments, Financial Engineering, and Quantitative Research, Sr. Portfolio Manager, Multi-Asset Solutions Team
Began career: 1994

Geoff Kelley, CFA 

Senior Portfolio Manager, Head of Strategic Asset Allocation and Systematic Equity Beta
Began career: 1994

Ashikhusein Shahpurwala, CFA, PRM

Senior Portfolio Manager
Began career: 1999

Boncana Maiga, CFA, CIM

Portfolio Manager
Began career: 2004

Allison Greenspan

Senior Analyst
Began career: 2009

Jenny Kim, CFA

Senior Analyst
Began career: 2011

Marco Leung, CFA

Senior Analyst
Began career: 2012

Research and client portfolio management

Sam Haidar, PhD

Director of Quantitative Research, Digital and DTC
Began career: 1998

Benjamin Forssell, CFA

Client Portfolio Manager
Began career: 2000

Investment processes

Manulife Smart Dividend ETF investment process

The quality dividend screen is at the foundation of the Manulife Smart Dividend ETFs. The criteria and metrics that are applied to each investment decision ensures that the ETFs maintain a consistent focus—to invest in companies with stable and growing dividends.

Posed as questions, below is the quality dividend screen the team uses when making buy, sell, or hold decisions within each ETF. The result is an efficient and scalable ETF.

1. Is the stock liquid?
2. Is the dividend amount sustainable, based on business performance?
3. Compared to earnings, is the dividend payout sustainable?
4. Can the dividend grow over time?
5. Is the dividend yield attractive compared to competitors?

To determine the allocation of the stocks in the ETF, the team considers four factors they believe drive better risk-adjusted returns. 

The four factors are:

1. Quality
2. Momentum
3. Value
4. Yield

Based on the outcome of their proprietary model, a weight is assigned to each stock in the ETF.

The finishing touches

Keys to efficient portfolio management: 

• Keep trading costs low when buying and selling, e.g., bulk trading, 
• Reduce turnover, when possible, e.g., avoid unnecessary trading, 
• Put cash to use, e.g., when new money flows into the fund, put it to use,
• and a tracking error monitoring system with targets well-inside of each ETFs performance threshold.

Manulife Smart Defensive Equity ETF investment process

As with the dividend ETFs, a screening process is at the core of the Manulife Smart Defensive Equity ETFs. 

The MSCI U.S.A Index is screened for:

1. Stocks with a 2-year beta of less than 1.05
2. Stocks with low volatility of earnings per share
3. Stocks with low volatility of price change

With a new, smaller universe of low beta, high-quality stocks, the portfolio managers rank and then select securities that exhibit characteristics of two important factors – beta and quality. Once the portfolio is constructed it is monitored daily and rebalanced quarterly. 

Active investment process

ETFs