How is my investment manager performing against its peers?

Why can't I access the investment manager information?

If you are a professional wealth adviser you can click the "request access" button on the homepage after you log in to see the full suite of data available to you. Note that not all managers choose to release their performance data. Unfortunately, we cannot allow public access to manager specific data for regulatory reasons, i.e. we cannot give investment advice without a formal contractual arrangement. If you are an investment manager, you can by all means become part of the community but we cannot let you see other manager’s information.

Do the Private Client Indices and Charity Indices include the investment manager's charges?

Yes, we collect the performance data net of investment manager’s fees & charges so you can see the true average client experience. We only use actual client portfolio returns in the calculation of the Indices.

Can you tell me the asset allocation of the PCI or ACI?

We can't tell you the exact asset allocation because the Indices are risk-based i.e. how much return has a manager given you for a given level of risk (volatility). We don’t collect the details of precisely where managers invest for each portfolio purely because average asset allocation, or currency allocation for that matter is effectively meaningless. It implies that every portfolio invests in a bit of everything from cash, equities and bonds, to more alternative things like commodities, gold, property, derivatives, fine wine, art etc., when this is far from reality.

What we can tell you is the asset allocation we have inferred using optimisation techniques. This shows what you potentially could have invested in to replicate the performance of the PCI.

Why can't I see individual investment manager's performance numbers? Can you give them to me?

The data is not "ours" to distribute, but most investment managers have chosen to show some performance information in the Manager Research area of the site. This is only accessible to professional wealth advisers. If you are a professional wealth adviser you can click the "request access" button on the homepage after you log in to see the full suite of data available to you. You can find contact details for each contributing manager in the respective Contributing Managers pages after logging in to Suggestus. Details can also be found at the back of the quarterly published reports.

What do all of these acronyms mean?

The IMI (Investment Management Industry) love these TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms), we’ve jotted down a non-exhaustive glossary beginning with our favourites:

ARC

Asset Risk Consultants, the good guys.

PCI

Private Client Indices, leading risk-based performance measure of private client discretionary portfolio performance (breathe)

ACI

ARC Charity Indices, similar to PCI, but constructed using portfolios run on a discretionary basis for Charitable organisations

DDQ

Due Diligence Questionnaire, a standardised document asking investment managers lots of questions about who, what, why, when, how and do they have a map

RFI

Request For Information, see DDQ

RFP

Request for Proposal, a formal request to an investment manager to provide details of what they could or would offer a specific client.Usually in the form of a long Powerpoint (other slideshow software available) presentation.

VAT

Value Added Tax, if you want a Performance Report, it will cost you £25 including VAT, per report.

RPQ

Risk Profiling Questionnaire, a series of questions aimed at investors to work out their tolerance and ability to take risk.

ATR

Attitude To Risk, see RPQ above

SRRI

A good one, Synthetic Risk Reward Indicator. This is defined by the CESR (Committee of European Securities Regulators), an independent committee of European Securities regulators, and is away of assessing an investment fund’s risk.It uses volatility (standard deviation, see RR, Relative Risk) over a five year period. The scale is 1 to 7, 1 being “low risk” and 7 “high risk”.

RR

Relative Risk, how we work out and define risk.We look at the volatility of an investment portfolio, and compare it to the same for World Equities.Taking a relative measure means you have some context, if your relative risk is half that of equities, broadly when equities (like the FTSE) go up 10% you might go up 5%. Volatility is actually standard deviation in a mathematical sense. It is the degree to which a given time period’s return could be away from the average.A smaller volatility number means that the value changes at a steady rate and conversely, a higher number means the value can shift more quickly This Investopedia article explains it quite well.

VaR

Value-at-Risk.See this Investopedia article for a succinct explanation.