Barclays Funds List

Smart Investor doesn’t offer financial advice, so you need to decide how to invest your money. The criteria outlined here can only help you narrow down the choice. Investing in funds is like any other type of investment. The value of your investment can fall as well as rise. You might not get back the amount you invest.

Selected by our investment specialists, the Barclays Funds List is a list of funds that have built solid reputations and established sound investment processes.

What’s the Barclays Funds List?

With thousands of different funds to choose from, it can seem like a big task to find the ones right for you. The Barclays Funds List is one way to help you narrow down the huge range of options available.

How our list can help

When it comes to investing, one of the most important things is diversification – spreading your money so it’s invested in different asset classes (shares, bonds and cash), geographical regions and sectors. This can help to reduce the overall risk because you’re not dependent on how a certain company, sector or market performs, lessening the chance of you losing money and hopefully helping to position yourself for long-term investment success.

The Barclays Funds List is made up of funds from each of the investment sectors we believe are key for building a diversified portfolio. As well as including funds from different sectors, our list includes different types of funds – active, trackers and our own Barclays Multi-Manager funds.  They are run in different ways so you can mix together multiple types of funds, depending on what you’re looking to achieve. Also, some sectors and funds are higher risk than others, so having a range of different styles can help when it comes to managing risk.

The list isn’t exhaustive and the funds aren’t personal recommendations to you; it’s up to you to decide if any of them are right for you.

Find out more about the importance of diversification.

What’s on our list?

Remember to spread your money across different countries and types of industries – so that when one isn’t performing so well, another may be performing better. Then consider which fund approach fits best with your objectives.

Keeping the Barclays Funds List up to date

Through our ongoing monitoring of the selected funds, we may decide to remove or add funds from or to the Barclays Funds List. To see changes to the list, please check our additions and removals page.

Looking under the bonnet of funds

Our funds list helps narrow down the huge range of funds available, but it’s still essential you fully review your choices. Some key things to look at are:

What's the ongoing cost?

The combined cost of the manager’s fee for managing the investments, plus other key costs of running the fund are deducted from the fund’s assets. The total of these is the ongoing cost, and you can find this on the fund’s Key Investor Information Document (KIID). This figure may vary over time.

What is a KIID risk score?

The risk score of a fund – as used in its KIID – reflects the significance of the fund’s share price fluctuations, usually over five years. Historical performance is not a reliable indicator of the future. A fund’s score may change over time. A fund in the lowest category of risk doesn’t mean it’s risk free. Generally, the higher the risk category, the more price movement experienced by the fund, and the greater potential for higher returns but also the higher the risk of losing money.

Accumulation or income units

Income units of a fund will pay out any income generated by the fund as a cash payment, normally made every six months. Accumulation units on the other hand, retain any income generated within the fund, with the aim of increasing the value of your investment. Find out more about accumulation versus income.