Having edged closer and closer to the title over the last number of years, the Melbourne-based research house finally took the top spot last year, and held firm in 2015 to win the title again.
The research house topped the dealer group part of the Money Management Rate the Raters survey, leading the way across six categories, having ended the fund manager survey neck and neck with Lonsec.
Zenith director, David Wright, attributed the firm’s success to the low rate of turnover among staff.
“It’s great to go back-to-back,” he said. “We’ve been fortunate enough to have virtually no staff turnover in the investment analyst team, which is quite a challenge, because research can tend to be a bit of a training ground for careers in other parts of the industry.
“It is very important to retain people — experienced people — and build up the level of intellectual property (IP) that you have by reviewing managers from year to year.
“If you have staff turnover, a lot of that IP can walk out the door, so I think that’s augured pretty well for us with the fund managers.”
Wright added that the continuity of staff in the company also provided benefits to dealer groups, when it comes to providing investment committee services.
“It’s not a role you can allocate to a junior analyst,” he said.
“But the hand holding aspect of providing portfolio and investment committee services to clients, I feel, helps us rate pretty well on client feedback, because they see us on a face-to-face basis, they have greater clarity on what we’re doing.”
