Profile's Annual Unit Trust Award

Purpose

The intention with the awards is to reward the best performing investment decision makers (fund/asset manager), at the end of each calendar year, for achieving good returns for the retail fund holders.

To track the current performances of the funds for the June and September 2024 quarters, Profile has released Running of the Bulls spotlights, which can be accessed via the Awards menu.

Profile's Annual Unit Trust Award Rules

Categories

Awards will be allocated in each unit trust category where there are 20, or more, qualifying funds.

The funds in smaller categories will be grouped together by broad asset classes for "best of the rest" awards.

Feeder funds will only be considered in the domestic (Rand denominated) categories in order to not potentially reward the same investment success twice.

Eligibility

Only actively managed funds will be considered.

Straight performance awards will be calculated over three years and risk adjusted awards over five years.

Full historical requirement: Funds need to have at least 3 years/more history for straight and 5 years/more history for risk-adjusted.

Funds must have been available to retail investors for at least 3 years for the risk-adjusted, and 1 year for straight performance, to be eligible for awards.

Awards are not made to money market funds because of the limitations placed on them in terms of duration and the types of instruments allowable.

Awards are not made to funds in the ASISA 'unclassified' sub-category as their mandates and investment objectives are not necessarily comparable.

Funds that have changed categories during the past year (even if they have been allowed by ASISA to retain their performance history) are not eligible for awards.

To be eligible for an award an offshore fund must have been on the FSCA approved list for at least three years. The historical data for the fund needs to have been made available to Profile on the last working day of December in the year preceding the awards ceremony.

Calculation

The most expensive (highest TER) retail class of each fund, that meets the full historical requirement (see eligibility rules), will be used for the calculations. This could include a class that is closed to new investment but remains open for its existing investors. Clean, or platform, classes will not be used.

Classes that have changed from institutional to retail in the past three years for the risk-adjusted, and one year for straight performance, will not be used.

Where an FSCA-approved fund has accumulation and income classes, the accumulation class is used.

For straight performance awards the total return of the class will be calculated over the three year period, ending at the end of the calendar year, and the top ranked fund per category will receive the award.

For risk adjusted awards the Plexcrown methodology will be used where a weighted composite score based on Alpha as well as Sharpe, Sortino, Treynor and Omega Ratios is calculated for each of the funds and the fund with the best aggregated rankings will receive the award.

Domestic third party management companies will be rated/considered on their own, separate from their main management company. A management company is rated by calculating a weighted average Plexcrown rating for each of its funds in the four main asset categories. These averages are then weighted again by category for the final score per Management Company.