Fund selectors should review buy lists for vehicles with “less performance substance and more reputational and sales momentum”, specialists have suggested.
Analysis of products recommended by D2C buy lists, ratings agencies, adviser and off-platform lists found that while a number of good products were mentioned, some “strong candidates for inclusion” were overlooked.
Graham Bentley, managing director of investment marketing consultancy gbi2, which carried out the study with research house Fundscape, said there were “significant differences in the quality of the research processes we reviewed”.
“There are plenty of funds that deserve to be on the lists, but there were also some that had less performance substance and more reputational and sales momentum,” he said.
“We were also surprised by the number of funds that were clearly strong candidates for inclusion, but were overlooked by some independent researchers.”
The research, which used seven weighted factors to analyse 36 lists over one, three, five and 10-year periods, found that recommendations by these “gatekeepers” amounted to 30 per cent of the available fund universe but these products made up 96 per cent of industry assets.
The fund group with the most appearances on the lists was Schroders, followed by Fidelity and Invesco Perpetual.
