John Hancock GA Senior Loan Trust
Investment objective, principal investment strategies, and principal risks (unaudited)
Economic and market events risk. Events in the U.S. and global financial markets, including actions taken by the U.S. Federal Reserve or foreign central banks to stimulate or stabilize economic growth, may at times result in unusually high market volatility, which could negatively impact performance. Reduced liquidity in credit and fixed-income markets could adversely affect issuers worldwide. Financial Institutions could suffer losses as interest rates rise or economic conditions deteriorate.
Fixed-income securities risk. A rise in interest rates typically causes bond prices to fall. The longer the average maturity or duration of the bonds held by a fund, the more sensitive it will likely be to interest-rate fluctuations. An issuer may not make all interest payment or repay all or any of the principal borrowed.
Changes in a security’s credit quality may adversely affect fund performance. Additionally, the value of inflation-indexed securities is subject to the effects of changes in market interest rates caused by factors other than inflation (real interest rates). Generally, when real interest rates rise, the value of inflation-indexed securities will fall and the fund’s value may decline as a result of this exposure to these securities.
Illiquid and restricted securities risk. Illiquid and restricted securities may be difficult to value and may involve greater risks than liquid securities. Illiquidity may have an adverse impact on a particular security’s market price and the fund’s ability to sell the security.
Liquidity risk. The extent (if at all) to which a security may be sold without negatively impacting its market value may be impaired by reduced market activity or participation, legal restrictions, or other economic and market impediments. Liquidity risk may be magnified in rising interest rate environments due to higher than normal repurchase requests. Widespread selling of fixed-income securities during periods of reduced demand may adversely impact the price or salability of such securities.
Loan participations risk. Participations and assignments involve special types of risks, including credit risk, interest rate risk, liquidity risk, and the risks of being a lender. Investments in loan participations and assignments present the possibility that a fund could be held liable as a co-lender under emerging legal theories of lender liability. If a fund purchases a participation, it may only be able to enforce its rights through the lender and may assume the credit risk of the lender in addition to the borrower.
Lower-rated and high-yield fixed-income securities risk. Lower-rated and high-yield fixed-income securities (junk bonds) are subject to greater credit quality risk, risk of default, and price volatility than higher-rated fixed-income securities, may be considered speculative, and can be difficult to resell.
Operational and cybersecurity risk. Cybersecurity breaches may allow an unauthorized party to gain access to fund assets, customer data, or proprietary information, or cause a fund or its service providers to suffer data corruption or lose operational functionality. Similar incidents affecting issuers of a fund’s securities may negatively impact performance. Operational risk may arise from human error, error by third parties, communication errors, or technology failures, among other causes.
Senior loans risk. Senior loans may be comparatively less liquid relative to markets for other more liquid fixed income securities. Restrictions on transfers in loan agreements, a lack of publicly-available information, irregular trading activity and wide bid/ask spreads among other factors, may, in certain circumstances, make senior loans difficult to value accurately or sell at an advantageous time or price than other types of securities or instruments. Senior loans may have extended trade settlement periods which may result in cash not being immediately available. If an issuer of a senior loan prepays or redeems the loan prior to maturity, the fund may have to reinvest the proceeds in other senior loans or similar instruments that may pay lower interest rates. Senior loans in which the fund invests may or may not be collateralized, although the loans may not be fully collateralized and the collateral may be unavailable or insufficient to meet the obligations of the borrower. The fund may have limited rights to exercise remedies against such collateral or a borrower, and loan agreements may impose certain procedures that delay receipt of the proceeds of collateral or require the fund to act collectively with other creditors to exercise its rights with respect to a senior loan.
