City Asset Management awarded top rating by Defaqto

Defaqto has awarded City Asset Management (CAM) a five-star rating for its bespoke discretionary portfolio service.

Defaqto, an independent financial research and software company, now rates bespoke and model portfolio services from discretionary fund managers (DFMs).

Helen Angove, business development director at City Asset Management, said the group was one of only a handful to be awarded a top rating.

“Defaqto has based its assessment on a number of key features they know IFAs are concerned about, including accessibility, costs, back office integration capability, tax statements and online access to valuations,” she said.

“We outsourced performance monitoring to Asset Risk Consultants several years ago and established our service charter at the same time, as we know IFAs and their clients really value high standards.”

Nicholas Coghill, chief executive at City Asset Management, said the company had seen a “significant growth in requests for due diligence information” as the number of advisory businesses that outsource to DFMs increases in the lead up to 2013.

Besides City Asset Management, Defaqto also rates Standard Life Wealth, Principal Investment Management, Brooks Macdonald’s Portfolio Service Option 1 and 2, Close Brothers Group’s Bespoke Portfolios Options 1 and 2, Vestra Wealth, Albert E Sharp and Collins Stewart Wealth Management as five-star.

City Asset Management has two retail products – the £6m Elite CAM Balanced Discretionary and £9m Elite CAM Cautious discretionary funds –which use approximately 80-90 per cent of the same underlying funds as the group’s bespoke cautious and balanced portfolios. The latter requires a minimum investment of £100,000 from clients.

The retail funds are managed by City Asset Management’s research director James Calder with benchmarks of consumer prices index inflation plus 4 percentage points and 2 percentage points respectively.

They give investors access to discretionary-type investment management with a £1,000 minimum investment – a more standard sum in the retail market.