Lipper's top funds, by category
Commerce Investment Advisors
Category
Small-company fixed income
Who
Scott Colbert, Chief Economist, Director of Fixed Income Management and Chairman of the Fixed Income Strategy Committee
How they do it
When it comes to its investing philosophy, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree at
Commerce Investment Advisors, LLC. The firmis a subsidiary of Kansas City, Mo.-based Commerce Bank, and both take pride in their conservatism. “Commerce is a high-quality, lower-risk bank,and a lot of that has rubbed off onto the money management arm,” said Scott Colbert, chief economist, director of fixed income management and chairman of the fixed income strategy committee, who heads a team based in St. Louis. Money managers at Commerce also benefit from signals the bank’s footprint provides, he said. For example,in the period before the U.S. auto industry imploded, Commerce was picking up red flags from clients that dealt directly with the industry. As a result, the Commerce funds gradually reduced their auto industry exposure before the financial crisis that resulted in the bankruptcies of Chrysler and General Motors. “As a bank, you hear and see things that you wouldn’t at a small boutique money manager,”Colbert said. “ That cross-pollination of ideas and thought processes differentiates us from a lot of stand-alone money management shops.”
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