This Multi-Asset Income Fund Has a Well-Established Approach

Key Morningstar Metrics for BNY Mellon Multi-Asset Income Fund

• Morningstar Medalist Rating
  : Silver
• Process Pillar
  : Above Average
• People Pillar
  : Above Average
• Parent Pillar
  : Average

BNY Mellon Multi-Asset Income applies Newton’s well-established thematic approach, using active security selection, to cater to its income-oriented approach. Lead manager Paul Flood has guided the fund since its 2015 inception.

Flood is an experienced equity and multi-asset investor who joined Newton in 2004. He took over leadership of its multi-asset team in July 2022 after Rob Stewart’s retirement. In January 2026, Flood became overall head of multi-asset at Newton. Flood combines team leadership with portfolio management duties on several funds, and research of alternative assets, which play a key role in this strategy. He is responsible for the asset allocation and security selection decisions. Flood’s experience in multi-asset, equity income, and alternatives investing is well suited to this strategy. He is backed by Newton’s multi-asset team, including alternate manager Bhavin Shah, and the firm’s wider analytical resources, which are a valuable input for security selection.

Although they still provide an advantage to the multi-asset managers, turnover in the central analyst pool has been a watchpoint in the past several years. We’d like to see a period of stability for Newton and the research team, but we remain confident in Flood and the multi-asset team, and we maintain our Above Average People Pillar rating.

While there is broad leeway in asset allocation, the fund’s equity weighting has usually ranged between roughly 45%-55%. In the remainder of the portfolio, alternatives have at times played a bigger role than bonds, particularly in the era of low bond yields before 2022 when alternatives reached just over 35%, and the bond allocation moved as low as 12%.

Alternatives have been important for this fund’s long-term returns and income generation. Favoring alternatives to fixed income considerably bolstered results in 2021 and 2022, but their poor performance in 2023 contributed to a bottom-decile return. However, overall, the flexibility of the mandate has been used effectively to generate high, stable, and steadily increasing levels of income, as well as very competitive absolute and risk-adjusted returns since inception.

BNY Mellon Multi-Asset Income Fund: Performance Highlights

Overall absolute and risk-adjusted performance has been well ahead of the GBP allocation 40%-60% equity Morningstar Category average since the fund’s inception in 2015. These good results have come with very solid income generation, consistently increasing the value of fund dividend payouts every year.

Volatility has been higher than the broader category and category index, but similar to other multi-asset income strategies in its category, which share biases like underweighting in government bonds. Like some income-focused peers, the fund suffered an outsize drawdown in the first quarter of 2020, the clean W share class falling 20% compared with a 13.3% drop for the category average, but returns for the full year were middle-of-the-pack.

Favoring alternatives over bonds contributed to good results in 2021 and 2022. In fact, 2022’s relative performance was standout, managing a small positive return while the category average and index respectively lost 10.5% and 9.3%. Very low exposure to government bonds and an almost 35% allocation to alternatives at the start of the year were key in 2022, while stock selection and a bias toward value equities also helped.

In 2023 and 2024, the fund didn’t keep pace with the category average and index, owing to weakness in the alternatives sector, some adverse stock selection and style headwinds in equities. 2025 was a very strong year for the fund, with all asset classes contributing positively, and positive stock selection across several sectors, notably financials. Over the 12 months ended July 2026, performance was again standout, including a significant contribution from stock selection in the information technology sector.