IDAD’s Global Head of Funds and Partnerships tells Investment International why a £70bn smoothed multi-asset strategy could resonate with Latin American advisers and why the region is central to the firm’s global expansion.
The fifth annual Investment International Latin America Forum takes place at the JW Marriott Polanco in Mexico City on Thursday 10 September 2026.
Ahead of the event, Dan Charles, Head of Digital at Investment International and International Adviser, sat down with Jeremy Krausz, CFA, Global Head of Funds and Partnerships at IDAD, to discuss his career, the firm’s growing funds business and why Latin America is a key market for its global expansion.
From Toronto to global fund distribution
Born in Toronto, Canada, Krausz began his career in institutional asset management at one of the country’s major banks, working with clients including large pension funds.
“I initially wanted to become a portfolio manager, which led me towards the CFA qualification,” he said. “From there, I moved into a role as an equity product specialist.”
After travelling through Asia, where he met the English woman who would become his wife, Krausz relocated to southeast London. He now lives there with his wife and son.
It was in London that he concluded relationship management was a better fit for his skills. A series of roles subsequently took him into retail asset management before he joined IDAD in November 2025 to lead its global fund distribution business.
Bringing a £70bn investment story to new markets
Krausz’s presentation in Mexico City will focus on IDAD’s WealthGuard Smoothed Growth proposition and the established investment strategy underpinning it.
The WealthGuard Smoothed Growth Feeder Funds are available in sterling, euros and US dollars and provide access to the corresponding currency versions of M&G’s International Smoothed Multi-Asset Growth Fund*.
“At a high level, it is a £70bn investment story,” Krausz said. “It is already extremely well known in the UK and select European markets, but it is now becoming available to international advisers through a wider range of platforms and life companies.”
The proposition operates within a balanced-risk, multi-asset profile. Although it could loosely be compared with a traditional 60/40 portfolio, Krausz said its underlying diversification is considerably broader. He added that the US-dollar version of the underlying strategy has generated approximately 8.5% annualised since inception.
According to Krausz, the strategy has three principal differentiators: smoothing, scale and structure.
The smoothing mechanism means the fund normally grows in line with an Expected Growth Rate based on a long-term investment outlook. Adjustments can be made upwards or downwards when market conditions and underlying performance move sufficiently away from that expected path.
“That Expected Growth Rate creates a greater degree of predictability for clients who are using investments to meet future financial objectives,” Krausz said.
He also views smoothing as an important behavioural tool. Morningstar’s Mind the Gap 2026 research found that the average dollar invested in US mutual funds and exchange-traded funds earned 1.2 percentage points less annually than the funds’ aggregate return over the decade to the end of 2025. The difference reflected the timing and scale of investors’ purchases and sales.
Krausz believes that reducing the visible short-term fluctuations experienced by clients can help them remain invested, while also providing a potentially valuable tool for managing sequencing risk during drawdown.
Institutional scale and greater diversification
Scale is the second major advantage. The underlying strategy’s size and its position within M&G’s wider life business can provide access to specialist investment managers and bespoke mandates that would be difficult for smaller funds to obtain.
Krausz pointed to a bespoke US equity allocation managed by BlackRock as an example of how that scale can be used.
The third differentiator is structure. Combining the capabilities of an asset manager and an insurance company creates access to a wider investment universe, including assets that can be challenging to hold in a conventional, daily traded retail fund.
“Where a traditional fund might gain property exposure through an investment trust, this strategy can physically own buildings and invest directly in infrastructure projects around the world,” Krausz explained.
“That creates genuine long-term diversification and allows the portfolio to be constructed more like the investment strategy of a large pension fund than a conventional retail multi-asset fund.”
From familiarity in Europe to opportunity in Latin America
The difference in awareness between established and emerging markets has already become clear during Krausz’s international travels.
When he presented the proposition to more than 100 European financial advisers in May, he estimated that more than 85% of the audience either knew the underlying strategy or already had clients invested in it.
“One adviser came up to me afterwards and said he had been using the strategy for clients for more than 20 years,” Krausz recalled. “He said he had never received a complaint and that those clients gave him some of his easiest annual reviews.”
The experience was very different during a subsequent two-week roadshow through Asia, where Krausz said only two people he met had previously heard of the strategy.
“Once people understood the story, the response was that they had been looking for something like it,” he said. “We began receiving trade requests directly from relationships developed during that trip.”
Krausz expects a similarly low starting level of awareness in Latin America but believes that presents a significant opportunity.
“Financial planning is ultimately about putting a plan in place to accomplish future goals in as predictable a way as possible,” he said. “The predictability created through the Expected Growth Rate is therefore a particularly powerful feature.
“I am excited about bringing an extremely successful concept to a new market. I am confident that advisers in Latin America will come to see it as a core part of their offering, just as many advisers already do in the UK and Europe.”
IDAD targets further international growth
IDAD was established by Clive Moore in 2002 and has grown into a global business employing close to 50 people. The firm has issued more than $7bn of products and is already known by many international advisers for its experience and transparency in that sector.
However, Krausz stressed that its ambitions extend beyond individual investment products.
“IDAD does not simply offer products; we offer solutions,” he said. “An opportunity to provide access to a strategy of this scale does not happen by chance.”
He believes IDAD’s established distribution network and long-standing relationships were instrumental in developing its partnership with M&G.
The company now has sales managers operating across markets including Thailand, Hong Kong, South Africa and Turkey. Krausz said that network gives the funds business warm introductions to hundreds of advisory firms internationally.
“The biggest challenge is going to be time, while the biggest opportunity is the current lack of familiarity with the solution,” he said. “Time is something we can address by allocating more resources and, ultimately, building out the team.”
Latin America will be a central part of that expansion.
“We already have strong relationships in the region, although many advisers will primarily know IDAD as a structured-product provider,” Krausz said. “Latin America is a key territory in our global network expansion, and we are committed to putting the time and resources into developing both our funds and structured-products businesses there.
“I am looking forward to introducing our story to new faces in Mexico City on 10 September. Please feel free to reach out before the conference, or come and speak to us on the day. We look forward to meeting everyone and wish all those travelling to the event a safe journey.”
*Underlying ISINs the WealthGuard funds track: USD - IE00B3BWBK25, GBP - IE00B3BWBF71, EUR - IE00B3BWBP79.
Watch the full interview here: https://youtu.be/N0-X607BsLM
