By Jason Spits
Managedfunds research houseAssirthas restructured its research analysts along sector lines ahead of a recategorisation of some funds.
The analysts will move from focusing on individual managers and adopt a horizontal focus across 10 sectors, with a lead and secondary analyst assigned to each investment sector who will undertake, and be responsible for, all research within those sectors.
Analysts will work across a number of sectors and may switch from the lead to the secondary roles based on experience with senior team members picking sectors where they have the most experience. Meanwhile, junior members will not specialise but follow the lead of senior members.
Assirt says assigning two analysts to research the abilities of all managers across a sector will give the group’s research greater latitude and create a relative picture of the fund manager’s investment capabilities.
The restructuring of the analysts within Assirt comes ahead of a planned round of categorisation changes to the research house’s fund classification system.
Assirt says the changes will result in the introduction of new categories, while definitions for current categories would change with a large number of funds to be reclassified in the research house’s publications and information services.
The most prominent changes will result in the re-positioning of the multi-sector categories from 30, 50, 70 and 70+ to 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100.
Assirt says the changes will be beneficial and allow valid peer group comparison between fund statistics, while ensuring the group’s benchmarks reflect current and future industry trends and also reflect the growth of product trends such as absolute return funds.
According to Assirt, the changes will have no effect on its funds ratings as they are not dependent on the category, and no fund, sector or manager ratings will be changed as a result of the introduction of the new categorisation policy.
