Kemper Financial Services, a leading seller of mutual funds through banks, has unveiled a fund that combines two distinct investment strategies in a single portfolio.
The Kemper Value+Growth Fund will split its assets between growth stocks, whose earnings growth is expected to outpace the market, and value stocks, which are considered bargains because their price is low relative to their earnings potential, the Long Grove, Ill., company said.
Growth and value stocks tend to move in opposite directions, so combining them in one portfolio should produce less volatile results than a fund made up purely of either category of stocks, said James L. Greenawalt, executive vice president and director of sales at Kemper.
As a result, he expects the fund to catch on with the bank brokerage crowd.
"Bank customers want to get into equities, but they're not particularly interested in taking on a lot of risk," Mr. Greenawalt said. "This product allows a bank customer to buy an equity with a little less risk involved."
The product is something of a departure for Kemper, Mr. Greenawalt added, noting that the firm "has been historically known as a pure growth organization."
The growth portion of the portfolio is managed directly by Kemper, and the value portion is managed by Dreman Value Advisors, a Kemper subsidiary in Jersey City.
Kemper has begun promoting the new fund through a series of seminars featuring Dreman Value Advisors' president, David Dreman.
Bank brokers and brokers from other channels have been invited to the seminars in New York, metropolitan and suburban Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
