Saudi Arabia’s HSBC Amanah has continued its recent portfolio expansion by launching a new Saudi-facing equity fund.

The Saudi Freestyle Equity Fund was launched on 7 January with an AUM of approximately $10m and will target upscale retail and private banking clients. “The fund’s strategy is to be invested in a limited number of stocks with a high conviction regardless of the market weights of the invested stocks,” HSBC Saudi’s managing director and head of investments Osamah Shaker told Mena FM. “It will be more of concentrated and unrestricted portfolio.”

The $2.2bn firm has seen an increase in launch activity in the past six months, rolling out a commodity fund in September and its first Saudi-facing ETF in November. HSBC Saudi has a portfolio of more than 20 mutual funds, including several other Saudi equity funds. Shaker added that he expects to see double digit growth for the Saudi equity market over the next 12 months.

“We believe now is a good time to launch a Saudi equity fund because the Saudi equity market has lagged the developed as well as the emerging equity markets over the past six years,” he said. “It is currently attractively valued with reasonable clarity about the potential growth of the companies’ earnings.”