The Judging Process

The first stage of the judging process involved running a quants screen across the entire UK unit trust and Oeic universe, using statistics provided by Morningstar and Lipper up to 31 March 2009. All figures are bid to bid with net income reinvested at ex-dividend, not payment date.

The quants screen, the same as that employed in previous years, looks at each fund’s percentile ranking within its own IMA sector over each of the three discrete years to 31 March 2009. The screen gives a 20% weighting to the percentile ranking achieved during the 12 months to 31 March 2007, 30% to the period to 31 March 2008 and 40% to the year to 31 March 2009. In addition a 10% weighting is given to the fund’s Sortino ratio.
These four separate figures are added up to give a single number, with the highest possible score being 100.

Using this database the panel then stripped out any fund that: had less than £15m of assets as of 31 March 2009; had a manager with less than a three year track record on that portfolio; was aimed solely at institutional or charities investors; or was not in the top half of its IMA peer group over the 12 months to the end of March 2009.

In 2009, like previous years, the judging panel chose to include select offshore funds. The offshore universe of funds, which was restricted to FSA-recognised vehicles that have distributor status, was assessed using the same quants screen as described above, however, an additional qualitative element was also introduced. The judging panel first selected funds from the onshore list and supplemented this with offshore funds, which also scored highly on the above quants basis. In selecting the offshore funds, however, the panel favoured portfolios it felt were actively marketed and relevant to the UK retail market.

Once this had been done, the panel then constructed its Investment Week peer groups made up either of an individual IMA sector, or a composite of two or more. The quants scores were used to draw up the shortlist in each Investment Week category and questionnaires were then sent to those managers who had made it through to that stage of the process. The answers to these questionnaires were used as the basis for picking the winner in each category.

In any category where a fund is shortlisted from a group at which a member of the panel works, that panel member does not vote on who should win the award. In the case of the Asset Allocator Award in 2008 an entirely separate judging panel was used. This was because the original panel, consisting of fund of funds managers felt it would not be right for them to pick a winner which contained so many of their own, or direct competitor products.

To be eligible for the Global Group of the Year Award, a fund house had to have at least one UK Equity, one European, one Asia or Japan fund, one North America and one bond fund. The panel took the quants scores for each fund in a group’s range with assets above £15m and divided it by the number of eligible funds to come up with an overall quants figure. This was then used to draw up a shortlist and the panel then used its qualitative judgement to pick a winner.

For the Specialist Investment Group of the Year Award, the panel considered smaller boutique firms which do not have the same breadth of range and uses a qualitative judgement to pick a shortlist and winner. However, to qualify a group had to have the majority of its retail fund range onshore.