Research house, Zenith, has grabbed the gold medal from fund managers, outperforming its rivals in four out of six categories, in the 2016 Money Management Rate the Raters survey.
Zenith scored the top ratings in the eyes of the fund managers for its turnaround time, the transparency of its research process, and the quality and experience of its staff. Additionally, the managers agreed that the feedback they received from Zenith was the most satisfactory.
On the other hand, the first part of the annual survey saw its silver medallist, Mercer, being highly praised for its research methodology and winning the highest score from fund managers in terms of satisfaction for the ratings they had been awarded.
This year, the survey also asked almost 60 fund managers to rate five research houses instead of four, as SQM Research had officially joined the rest of the houses.
Fund managers also expressed concerns with the tendency for research houses to directly reflect the interests of banks, and noted the Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) reforms limited the amount of feedback they could provide.
Other concerns voiced by the fund managers in the survey included the lack of understanding of their products, investment processes or business models by the research houses. The fund managers also expressed concerns over the subscription model construction, used by the research houses, and problems when dealing with the raters’ staff.
This year, Lonsec was pushed down to second spot in favour of Zenith, which was the most frequently used research house by fund managers. Morningstar remained in third place, followed by Mercer and SQM Research, which managed to attract over one-third of all the fund managers surveyed this year.
Read the full feature here: Zenith grabs gold from fund managers
