It is easy to find out which funds have performed the best over a certain time period, but shouldn’t it be just as easy to know which group is doing the best? We decided to find out which were the best returning fund groups for the past 12 months and which would become Money Management’s Fund House of the Year.
Our rankings are based on the average return for all funds from each fund group, and are by no means scientific, nor should they be construed as a recommendation or advice. Research like this could turn out to be biased towards a certain size fund group – it is easier to maintain strong performance across a smaller range of funds – so to avoid this, our results have been separated into small, mid and large sized companies. This is not to do with market capitalisation, but purely the number of funds available to make it an easier like-for-like comparison. Small groups are those which have between one and nine funds available to UK retail investors, medium sized groups have between 10 and 39, and large groups have more than 40 funds available.
All data has been calculated using figures from Morningstar over the 12 months to 1 May 2014. The funds were first arranged by group and then by space as classified by the Investment Management Association (IMA) to calculate the returns.
The IMA spaces cover a range of sectors grouped as follows:
Fixed income: £ Corporate Bond, £ High Yield, £ Strategic Bond, Global Bonds, Global Emerging Markets Bond, UK Gilts and UK Index Linked Gilts sectors.
Mixed Investments: Flexible Investment, Mixed Investment 0-35 per cent Shares, Mixed Investment 20-60 per cent Shares, Mixed Investment 40-85 per cent Shares and UK Equity and Bond Income sectors.
UK: UK All Companies, UK Equity Income and UK Smaller Companies sectors.
Europe: Europe Excl. UK, Europe Incl. UK and European Smaller Companies sectors.
Global: Global, Global Emerging Markets, Global Equity Income, Specialist and Technology and Telecommunications sectors.
North America: North America and North American Smaller Companies sectors.
Asia: Asia Pacific excl. Japan, Asia Pacific incl. Japan and China/Greater China sectors.
Japan: Japan and Japanese Smaller Companies sectors.
Other: Targeted Absolute Return, Personal Pensions, Protected and Unclassified sectors.
Property: Sector stands alone.
Money Market: Money Market and Short Term Money Market sectors.
