The winners of the 2016 Professional Planner|Zenith Fund Awards have been announced, at an event at Ivy Ballroom in Sydney. The awards recognise the best talent in the Australian funds management market, and cover 19 separate categories, including Distributor of the Year and the headline Fund Manager of the Year.
The 2016 Fund Manager of the Year is Bennelong Australian Equity Partners – with the manager also picking up top honours in the Australian equities – large cap and Australian equities – small/mid/micro cap categories.
The 2016 Distributor of the Year is Pinnacle Investment Management. Its affiliated managers include Resolution Capital, winner of the global REIT category, and Antipodes Global Investment Partners, winner of the international equities – alternative strategies (long/short global, long/short regional, income overlay (options)) category.
More than 330 representatives of the leading fund management organisations attended the awards, co-hosted by Zenith Investment Partners managing partner David Wright and national sales manager John Nicoll. The event was produced by Conexus Financial, publisher of Professional Planner, and sponsored by Fundamental Media.
The awards are based on Zenith’s renowned research and analysis, and cover nine key aspects of a fund manager’s structure, processes and people:
1. Organisational strength
2. Investment philosophy
3. Investment process
4. Investment team
5. Security selection
6. Security valuation
7. Portfolio construction
8. Risk management
9. Performance
Quan Nguyen, a senior investment analyst with Zenith, says the finalists and the winners of the awards are “of high quality; they’ve built sustainable businesses; outperformed consistently; and delivered upon their investment objectives”.
“They’ve got strong investment personnel, top-notch infrastructure, good investment process and culture,” he says.
“We make an assessment of the organisation, the team, investment process and unique features. We look at performance as well, and whether or not they’ve delivered on objectives and, going forward, do we think that they are able to deliver upon objectives?”
Nguyen says Zenith assesses the capability of the fund manager, and the rating of the manager’s capability flows on to the individual products and portfolios that draw on that capability.
Nguyen says the winners of the fund awards aren’t necessarily expected to shoot the lights out on performance every year, but the research house has a high level of confidence that the managers will deliver on their stated investment objectives.
“There wouldn’t be any blow-ups, there wouldn’t be any disasters,” Nguyen says.
“We’re expecting these guys to consistently deliver upon objectives – and that might be that some of these funds are 1 per cent over or just outperform their benchmark, not necessarily being 10 per cent over, for instance.”