AIA Pension and Trustee and J.P. Morgan Asset Management (JPMAM) have initiated name changes to their MPF schemes under an alliance to better reflect the development of multi-manager strategies on the platform.

“AIA-JF Premium MPF Scheme”, one of the three schemes under the platform, will be renamed "AIA MPF – Prime Value Choice", which will take effect tentatively on 23 September 2011.

“The name changes of the other two MPF schemes will come shortly,” said Daniel Chiu, a spokesman at J.P. Morgan Asset Management. “We are still waiting for the green light on the name changes from the MPFA.”

American International Assurance (AIA), the parent company of AIA Pension and Trustee, and JF Asset Management (JF), part of J.P. Morgan Asset Management, formed a strategic alliance to provide MPF services in 1999. Since 2005, the alliance has been broadening the investment choices of its MPF schemes and started introducing additional third party investment managers to meet the varying investment needs of its clients.

"Over the years, we have been striving hard to enrich our MPF platform and pursuing multi-manager strategies. Today, our MPF platform contains 21 constituent funds managed by five renowned investment managers, including JF, all with diverse investment strategies," said Bonnie Tse, senior vice president and managing director at AIA Pension and Trustee.

Besides JF, PineBridge, Fidelity, RCM and Amundi are all helping in managing the funds in the schemes.

“With our multi-manager platform, clients can diversify their investments among different investment managers with different styles, and efficiently switch their investment choices within as little as one day without switching schemes. In the future, our strategies will continue to enrich our fund platform with this multi-manager approach. To better reflect our multi-manager strategies, AIA and JF have jointly decided to rename the Scheme. These changes will not affect our arrangement with JF where it will be business as usual," added Tse.

The renaming is also part of JPMAM’s global corporate rebranding initiative which began in 2008.

"This is simply an extension of the firm’s rebranding exercise which started in 2008. As part of the global, corporate rebranding initiative, our business brand was changed from JF Asset Management to J.P. Morgan Asset Management, bringing it into line with the rest of the firm. In addition, J.P. Morgan’s corporate branding policy prevents the use of dual branding with any other company other than a joint venture. I believe now is an ideal time for both parties to rename the Scheme,” said Edwin Chan, managing director and head of institutional and pension business at JPMAM.