Norwich Union’s Navigator master trust has taken out the top honour and bagged five out of eight of the premier service level awards for retail financial services.
Navigator took out overall first place in the Assirt Service Level Survey awards, announced last night at a gala dinner in Sydney, while Asgard and Summit took out equal second place.
The win for Navigator comes after an extensive redevelopment of the master trust product, which took three years to complete at a cost of more than $40 million.
The first fund manager to gain a ranking in the overall investment institution service rankings was BT Funds Management in fourth place, while Colonial First State came in fifth.
The service level awards have three categories: investment institutions, fund managers and master fund and wrap accounts.
Assirt chief executive Krystyna Weston says the reason for the split is that fund managers are also rated according to certain asset management criteria, which can not be applied to master trusts and wraps.
As a result of the demarcation, Colonial First State took top honours in the fund manager rankings, while Zurich came in second, and Perpetual and Norwich came in equal third.
The top three rankings for the master fund and wrap account category were identical to the overall award winners.
The award polled 495 advisers gathered at random from the Financial Planning Association (FPA) member lists, as well as from theYellow Pages. The survey covered 19 fund managers and eight master trust and wrap accounts.
The survey examined a range of key service features across seven categories, including quality of asset management, marketing and administration support, technical services and effectiveness of communication.
The 2001 Assirt Service Level Award Winners
Best in Industry
1 Navigator
2 Asgard and Summit Master Trust- equally placed
Best Fund Manager
1 Colonial First State Fund Managers
2 Zurich Funds Management
3 Perpetual Investments and Norwich Union- equally placed
Best Master Fund/Wrap Account
1 Navigator
2 ASGARD and Summit Master Trust- equally placed
Best Marketing Support – Navigator
Best Administration Support – Navigator
Best Technical Services Support – AMP
Ease of Doing Business with the Firm – Summit
Effectiveness of Communication – Navigator
