The Association of Investment Companies (AIC) has unveiled 13 new investment trust sectors following a year-long industry review aimed at making them “as clear and helpful as possible for investors”. 
Several of the new sectors have been created by the trade body to accommodate a greater number of trusts and investment companies focused on the alternative investment space. Since 2014 the amount held in alternative assets has grown by 92 per cent, rising from £39.5bn to £75.9bn in 2019.
Ian Sayers (pictured), chief executive of the AIC, said: “We undertook this review to ensure that investment company sectors accurately reflect the shape of the industry today.
“Recent years have seen significant growth in investment companies investing in alternative assets, such as property, debt and infrastructure and the emergence of new asset classes such as leasing and royalties.”
For example, the AIC has separated the Sector Specialist: Debt peer group into three new sectors: Debt – Direct Lending, Debt – Loans & Bonds and Debt – Structured Finance.
The Property Direct – UK and Property Specialist sectors have also been reclassified into Property – UK Commercial, Property – UK Healthcare, Property – UK Residential and Property – Debt.
Source: AIC
The changes, which will take effect from 28 May, has also seen the renaming of 15 further sectors.
Sayers added: “Our new sectors allow investors to find and compare companies with similar characteristics easily. I’m confident the new sectors will play a useful role in helping inform investors’ decisions.”
Elsewhere, the AIC has created three Asia Pacific peer groups, including a broad Asia Pacific, Asia Pacific Income and Asia Pacific Smaller Companies sectors.
In addition, there is a new Growth Capital sector, for closed-ended strategies investing in unquoted shares, a Royalties sector for specialist strategies and a Technology & Media sector.
A year-long review of the sectors was overseen by the trade body’s independent statistics committee of brokers, research analysts and data providers.
Source: AIC
The remainder of the AIC’s sectors remain unchanged.
To accompany the revised list of sectors, the trade body has issued new sector descriptions so that investors can more easily understand what each of the sectors invests in.
As of 31 March, there were 400 investment companies, trusts and venture capital trusts (VCTs) with total assets of £188.6b spread across 53 different sectors.
Following the revamp there will be 59 AIC sectors covering both the investment companies and trust space and VCTs.