AGF Announces Quantitative Investing and ETF Platform -- AGFiQ

AGFiQ's QuantShares ETFs expansion and enhancements well underway

Listing: NYSE (New York Stock Exchange)
Symbols: MOM, CHEP, SIZ, BTAL, DIVA

NEW YORK, April 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - AGF Management Limited (AGF) is pleased to announce the official launch of AGFiQ Asset Management (AGFiQ) in the U.S. market – the quantitative investment platform for AGF powered by an intellectually diverse, multi-disciplined team that combines the complementary strengths of investment professionals across AGF and its affiliates from Highstreet Asset Management Inc. (Highstreet) and FFCM, LLC (FFCM) to deliver innovative product ideas around specific client needs and outcomes.

Back in November 2015, AGF announced that it acquired the majority stake in FFCM, a Boston-based ETF advisor and asset management firm whose expertise is delivered through a family of alternative and smart-beta ETFs and a number of ETF managed strategies. Since that time much has happened to onboard FFCM into the AGF family.

• To date AGF has brought FFCM's entire operations inside our network and office delivering oversight for cybersecurity; a disaster recovery process; and a technology infrastructure to drive scale across their platform.
• FFCM's compliance processes have been fully integrated into AGF's.
• Given these operational enhancements and increased scalability, size of client opportunities can easily be managed for.

"This strategic investment strengthened our core competency in developing and managing our quantitative products," said Blake C. Goldring, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, AGF Management Limited. "The ability for us to bring together the investment management bench at both FFCM and Highstreet has reinforced AGF's commitment to offering innovative ideas that focus on risk mitigation, while offering active market participation."

"The addition of the team at FFCM has deepened AGF's platform from which to develop investment products, including ETFs, designed in an effort to manage volatility and deliver more consistent, repeatable results," added Goldring.

Led by Chief Executive Officer Bill Carey, FFCM creates, structures and manages ETFs. As ETF strategists, the investment team has a thorough understanding of the underlying instruments, which enables better asset allocation decisions and risk controls.

"Partnering with AGF has provided greater opportunity to grow our research, marketing and product development capabilities, while also bringing us operational scale and efficiencies," said Carey. "Early this year we were able to see this partnership flourish as we came together to form AGFiQ with the launch of seven QuantShares ETFs to the Canadian marketplace."

QuantShares U.S. ETFs

AGFiQ's QuantShares suite of U.S.-listed factor-based market neutral and sector neutral ETFs make use of "long-short" strategies in efforts of potentially generating spread returns that may help insulate investors from the ups and downs of the market. The firm offers four factor-based market neutral funds which provide exposure to momentum (MOM), value (CHEP), size (SIZ), and anti-beta (BTAL), and rounds out its line-up with an income-focused ETF, its Hedged Dividend Income Fund (DIVA).

Factor-based investing can offer a rigorous, empirically supported method for disciplined asset allocation in a systematic, risk-controlled manner.

"Our suite of ETFs were developed with the intention of isolating factor performance as much as possible in the marketplace. Those strategies can be quite useful for investors looking for uncorrelated income streams, attempting to smooth out returns, or 'tilting' a given portfolio towards a desired factor," added Carey.

On October 5, 2016, FFCM reduced certain expense ratios across its entire lineup of funds. Certain expenses across the line-up of QuantShares ETFs powered by AGFiQ have been limited to 75 basis points from 99 basis points for DIVA and 149 basis point for all other funds.

"This across-the-board expense ratio reduction speaks to our broader commitment to ensuring that investors in our products can access our strategies cost effectively as well as to the operational efficiencies achieved with our integration into AGF," said Carey.

Today, AGFiQ and its partners will be opening the NYSE exchange to celebrate the evolution of the AGF partnership and in recognition of the enhancements and history of the QuantShares ETF suite of products – all of which are celebrating track records of two or more years. In addition, a new website has been launched to deliver greater support for our clients and investors. For more information, visit AGFiQ.com.

About AGF

Founded in 1957, AGF Management Limited (AGF) is a diversified global asset management firm with retail, institutional, alternative and high-net-worth businesses. As an independent firm, we strive to help investors succeed by delivering excellence in investment management and providing an exceptional client experience. Our suite of diverse investment solutions extends globally to a wide range of clients, from financial advisors and individual investors to institutional investors including pension plans, corporate plans, sovereign wealth funds and endowments and foundations.

AGF has investment operations and client servicing teams on the ground in North America, Europe and Asia. With C$35.5 billion (as at March 31, 2017) in total assets under management, AGF serves more than one million investors. AGF trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol AGF.B.

ABOUT AGFiQ

AGF's quantitative products, including QuantShares ETFs powered by AGFiQ Asset Management (AGFiQ), are managed through Highstreet Asset Management Inc. (Highstreet), located in London, Ontario, and/or FFCM, LLC (FFCM), located in Boston, and are supported by a team of 21 investment professionals, from across AGF and its affiliates, managing AUM of approximately C$4.8 billion. AGFiQ's portfolio and investment management team has extensive experience in quantitative investing and research with a core investment discipline focused on factor-based investing. AGFiQ is grounded in the belief that investment outcomes can be improved by assessing and targeting the factors that drive market returns.

Before investing you should carefully consider each Fund's investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. This and other information is in Fund's prospectus which can be found at www.agfiq.com. Please read the prospectus carefully before you invest. 

FFCM has agreed (i) contractually to waive its management fees and reimburse expenses until November 13, 2017 to the extent necessary to prevent the Fund's net operating expenses (excluding interest, taxes, brokerage commissions and other expenses that are capitalized in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, dividend, interest and brokerage expenses for short positions, acquired fund fees and expenses, and extraordinary expenses, if any) from exceeding 0.75%. Basis points equals one hundredth of one percent.

Risks: There is no guarantee that the Funds will achieve their objective. An investment in the Funds is subject to risk including the possible loss of principal amount invested. The risks associated with each Fund are detailed in the prospectus and include, but not limited to, tracking error risk, mid-cap risk, industry concentration risk, market neutral style risk, short sale risk and specific risks related to exchange traded funds. There is a risk that during a "bull" market, when most equity securities and long only ETFs are increasing in value, the Funds' short positions will likely cause the Fund to underperform the overall U.S. equity market and such ETFs. The Fund may not be suitable for all investors.

Shares are not individually redeemable and can be redeemed only in Creation Units. The market price of shares can be at, below or above the NAV. Brokerage commissions will reduce returns. Market Price returns are based upon the midpoint of the bid/ask spread at approximately 4:00 PM Eastern time (when NAV is normally determined), and do not represent the returns you would receive if you traded shares at other times. Fund returns assume that dividends and capital gains distributions have been reinvested in the Fund at NAV. Some performance results reflect expense subsidies and waivers in effect during certain periods shown. Absent these waivers, results would have been less favorable.

Distributor: Foreside Fund Services, LLC

The AGF logo, "AGFiQ" and "powered by AGFiQ" are trademarks of AGF Management Limited and are used under licence. The Quantshares logo and "Quantshares" are trademarks of FFCM, LLC and are used under licence.

SOURCE AGF

Related Links

http://www.agf.com