Winners of inaugural Alexander Forbes investments Asterisk awards announced

Leon Greyling, Chief Executive Officer of Alexander Forbes Investments.

Alexander Forbes Investments is for the first time sponsoring three new awards to recognise the leaders of the South African investment schemes industry and also identify the year’s most exceptional funds and fund managers.

The inaugural annual awards, to be known as the Alexander Forbes Investments Asterisk Awards, were presented at the annual Financial Planning Institute of Southern Africa (FPI) gala dinner on 22 August 2018. The awards are the Best Equity Fund Award, Best Equity House Award and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Award. They are awarded to investment managers participating in the ASISA SA General Equity category.

“The Alexander Forbes Investments Asterisk Awards seek to recognise fund managers who demonstrate evidence of investment skill by incorporating in their quantitative ranking, criteria measures which explicitly look to capture manager skill. Measures based purely on performance, or even risk-adjusted performance, often fail to differentiate between the impact of skill and luck in investment outcomes,” says Leon Greyling, Chief Executive Officer of Alexander Forbes Investments.

“We believe that manager skill, rather than pure past performance, is more likely to provide evidence of the potential for superior investment outcomes going forward, and have thus incorporated this thinking into our Award criteria,” Greyling says. To qualify for consideration for the inaugural awards, funds should have had at least R250 million of assets under management as at the end June 2018, have a track record of at least five years and should have been in the top 90% of funds within the category by assets under management.

The Best Equity Fund Award was awarded to the fund which demonstrated the greatest performance, risk management and manager skill over the medium and long term; the Best Equity House Award considered fund houses which have at least one fund qualifying for consideration for the Best Equity Fund Award.

Nominees for this Award were judged based on a combination of the Best Equity Fund Award quantitative criteria and a score based on a qualitative assessment of the House performed by Alexander Forbes’ Manager Research Team. The ESG award focuses on funds which have scored highly in the ESG component of the qualitative review performed by the Alexander Forbes Manager Research Team together with the Best Equity Fund Award quantitative criteria.
The winners were:

• Best Equity Fund Award 2018 went to Aylett Equity Prescient A1 managed by Aylett & Co Fund Managers. Runners-up were Fairtree Equity Prescient A1 managed by Fairtree Capital and Investec Equity R managed by Investec Asset Management.

• Best Equity House Award 2018 went to Fairtree Equity Prescient A1 managed by Fairtree Capital. Runners up were Aylett Equity Prescient A1 managed by Aylett & Co Fund Managers and PSG Equity A managed by PSG Asset Management.

• Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Award 2018 went to Investec Equity R managed by Investec Asset Management. Runners up were Prudential Equity A managed by Prudential Investment Managers and SIM Top Choice Equity A1 managed by Sanlam Investments.

Greyling says Alexander Forbes Investments has been successfully researching and selecting investment managers and strategies for 21 years. The company influences or controls the placement of over R700bn of savings in South Africa and abroad. In addition, Alexander Forbes’ strategic alliance partner and anchor shareholder, Mercer, advices more than US$10 trillion in assets world-wide.

“We are therefore proud to draw on its deep experience in selecting the winning investment managers and drive the evolution of the investment management industry in South Africa by recognising the funds and fund managers exhibiting true consistent skill in achieving superior market returns through our inaugural Alexander Forbes Investments Asterisk Awards. In years to come, we plan to expand the range of awards granted across additional categories,” Greyling says.