Fund managers get new investment performance standard

Richard Gilbert

Members of the Investment and Financial Services Association (IFSA) have been provided with a new standard for the presentation of historical investment manager performance information.

IFSA announced this week that its Standards Oversight and Disciplinary Committee had approved the introduction of a guidance note on Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS), which would take effect from July 1.

The GIPS are a set of ethical principles designed to establish a standardised, industry-wide approach to how investment firms should calculate and report their investment results to prospective clients.

Commenting on the new guidance note, IFSA chief executive Richard Gilbert said the standards led to readily accepted presentations of investment performance, which meant performance results could be easily compared among investment management firms without regard to geographical location.

“GIPS help to facilitate a dialogue between investment managers and their prospective clients about the critical issues as to how an investment management firm has achieved performance results that can help determine future investment strategies,” he said.

“Australia is increasingly viewed as a global financial services centre, and internationally recognised benchmarks for performance are effectively a ‘common language’ understood around the world,” Gilbert said.