Quantitative judging process - Performance screening criteria

Which funds are included?

Funds must meet the following criteria to be considered:

• UK authorised and FCA-recognised with distributor status.
• £50m in size or above at 31 January 2025.
• Have a three-year track record at 31 January 2025 with the same managers/team. We will look at the record of named managers on the fund.
• Must be aimed at retail/wholesale investors. Funds aimed only at institutional or charities investors will not be included.

Scoring methodology

A weighted score is given to each fund's percentile ranking within qualifying Investment Association sectors over each of the three discrete years to 31 January 2025. These are sectors which we can map to our Fund Manager of the Year categories. 

There is a 20% weighting to the percentile ranking during the 12 months to 31 January 2023, 30% to 31 January 2024, and 40% to the period to 31 January 2025. In addition, a 10% weighting is given to the fund's Sortino ratio to give an indication of relative risk.

This creates a combined score and the top scoring funds are then included in the shortlists for the awards. The shortlist for the Group of the Year category will be based on the number of shortlisted funds in the category lists.

With special thanks to our event partner Morningstar for providing the data and statistics.

Qualitative judging process

Managers of the shortlisted funds are then invited to respond to an online questionnaire which asks further in-depth questions about the portfolio and contributing factors to performance over the period to help the judges in their deliberations. Our panel of highly experienced fund selectors drawn from across the industry will then judge each category in their area of expertise during our judging sessions in May.