Discover LIVs

The purchase of a share in a LIV gives you exposure to the diversity of investments held in the LIV’s portfolio. That’s much simpler than handling the purchase, administration and ongoing paperwork for a multitude of separate investments.

Why may diversity be a good thing? Having exposure to a range of investments may help you control your investment risk. When it comes to investment - it is generally best not to have all your eggs in one basket.

LIVs are ‘closed-end’ investments – they raise fixed amounts of capital through share issues, and they do not have daily investor deposits and withdrawals – so investors in the LIV can be confident the fund size will stay relatively stable and will not change unexpectedly.

This can work in your favour. A LIV’s stable capital allows it to hold long term assets, use long term investment strategies or buy assets in weak investment markets, when open-end funds are forced to sell assets to fund investor withdrawals. The LIV structure also avoids the fund costs and risks of administering and investing daily deposits and withdrawals.

Researching, selecting and changing investments to generate investment returns can take time, effort and skill. Investing in a LIV gives you the comfort of an investment portfolio that is managed by the LIV’s professional investment team following a defined strategy to generate return and control risk.

You can easily increase or decrease your investment by buying and selling LIV shares on ASX. You don’t need to submit an investment application or withdrawal request to do this.

Unlike open-ended funds where withdrawals may be frozen or prohibited for periods of time, you can offer to sell your LIV shares on ASX at any time. The market price and volume are set between willing buyers and willing sellers.

LIVs play an important role in growing the Australian economy. A LIV’s fixed investment capital means it is one of the few investment structures suited to providing the stable long-term investment capital required to fund longer duration investments.

LIVs that are Listed Investment Companies (LICs) provide an investor with the characteristics of a company structure. LICs can retain profits from year to year to smooth the income paid to investors. They also pay company tax. This allows them to distribute their after-tax income to investors as simple franked dividends with an associated tax credit.

In contrast, LIVs that are Listed Investment Trusts (LITs) offer the characteristics of a Trust structure. They do not pay tax and distribute 100% of their before-tax income to investors every year.