The fund uses the MSCI World All Countries as a reference index but the index is not used in the selection process, which makes the fund benchmark agnostic. Companies are selected based on their exposure to the selected trends, fundamental analysis, and integrated sustainability and risk analysis. The fund is managed by the Robeco Trends Investing team, with Marco van Lent as lead portfolio manager, and will have a highly concentrated portfolio of approximately 40-60 stocks.

The fund is complementary to Robeco Global Consumer Trends, which is aimed at the consumer side of the economy, and Robeco New World Financials, which is aimed at companies that provide financial services to both consumers and producers.

Henk Grootveld, Head of Trends Investing said: “In our Trends Investing team we believe that the world will change substantially in the decades to come and this fund has been developed to capitalize on the production side of the trends we see. It will focus on four producer trends. First of all, we believe that robots will replace most of the heavy-duty work which is currently still done by humans and, second, that Artificial Intelligence will boost the productivity of the traditional white-collar worker. Third, we expect cheaper renewable energy to fuel more and more local production. The fourth trend is based on our view that in this digital world cyber insecurity is a threat that can only be mitigated with the best possible defense. To launch a fund that captures these trends is a logical, yet exciting step and is a great diversifier to our existing Trends Investing product range.”

The fund, which is aimed at both retail investors and wholesale distributors, will be domiciled in Luxembourg, and will be available for investors in Robeco’s key markets upon investors demand. The Trends Investing team manages approximately EUR 2.8 billion (end April 2017) and the current Trend product range includes: Robeco Global Consumer Trends Equities, Robeco New World Financial Equities, Robeco Property Equities, Robeco Global Growth Trends Equities and Rolinco.