Menu
You are currently using Internet Explorer. This website is optimised for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge. You can download Chrome here, Firefox here or Microsoft Edge here.
The Adviser Centre is an expert fund and investment research service for financial professionals.
Founded by Peter Toogood and Gill Hutchison in 2014, the service supports financial professionals in the selection and monitoring of actively-managed funds, with a special focus upon the investor journey and suitability.
In selecting investments for their clients, one of the many choices for those populating portfolios is to decide between passive investments and active investments. Our aim is to assist advisers with this decision by highlighting actively-managed funds that we believe are worthy of the costs being charged to investors – in other words, endorsing funds that we believe offer ‘value for money’.
The ‘value’ of an active fund may be as simple as its success in outperforming the most relevant benchmark over time. Alternatively, it may be that a manager has particular skill in participating in a market whilst reducing potential losses, resulting in attractive risk-adjusted performance. Or, it may be that a manager adds value through a well-managed mix of assets or by providing a reliable source of income. Therefore, a fund’s ‘value for money’ is not only about its costs, but also about the outcome it offers to investors.
Bringing together these considerations, our succinct information helps advisers to focus upon a fund’s most important attributes, supporting their work in identifying appropriate choices for their customers.
For further information, download our brochure.
Our research is completely impartial and covers all open-ended, actively managed funds available to UK retail investors, subject to certain requirements (please refer to our brochure, see link above, for details). Given the importance of scale and resilience, firms featured in our service should have at least £5 billion in retail-facing assets under management.
In part, the costs of operating The Adviser Centre are met through licensing arrangements with fund management groups, who may choose to purchase the licensing rights to use our endorsements in the marketing of their funds (notably our logos and other collateral). This arrangement is entirely optional and is not a pre-requisite to inclusion in our service.
We regard any revenue received from licensing as a contribution towards the costs of maintaining The Adviser Centre. The annual licensing fee is set at a low level – £25,000 p.a. (excluding VAT). This is a flat fee and does not increase or decrease with the number of funds featured from any one fund manager. A smaller company rate is also available.
This open and fair pricing model reinforces the unbiased nature of our research.
The Adviser Centre team brings together individuals who have a passion for investment and have been involved in the funds industry for many years.
Peter began his career in 1989 and joined Forsyth Partners in 1994. He was appointed Chief Investment Officer in 2000 and was responsible for the management of traditional and alternative multi-asset funds and was also co-founder of the Forsyth-OBSR Ratings Service, established in 2002. He joined OBSR (later acquired by Morningstar) in 2008 and led the fund advisory business. He founded The Adviser Centre with Gill Hutchison in 2014 and the business has been part of the Embark Group since 2016. He is a regular contributor to CNBC and Bloomberg TV.
Gill began her career in 1992 at Credit Suisse Private Banking London and managed a discretionary portfolio of funds service before joining MeesPierson Private Banking as a portfolio manager. She joined OBSR in 2003 (later acquired by Morningstar) where she had leadership roles in the research team and headed the investment consultancy business. She founded The Adviser Centre with Peter Toogood in 2014 and the business has been part of the Embark Group since 2016.
Marianne has worked in the investment industry since 2001 and has been involved in dedicated fund research since 2008. She joined the fund research team at Morningstar OBSR in 2010, covering a range of sectors as well as supporting the investment consultancy business. After its launch in 2014, Marianne joined the team at The Adviser Centre. She has the Investment Management Certificate, has passed the Chartered Institute for Securities Investments (CISI) level 4 Diploma in Investment Advice and, in addition, is a Chartered Fellow of the CISI.
Ian has worked closely with The Adviser Centre team since 2018. He began his investment career at Barings and subsequently spent over 25 years working in the asset management industry in senior sales and marketing roles. Ian has also been involved in the management of institutional portfolios and is qualified to manage and advise on private client portfolios. He holds the Investment Management Certificate, is qualified through the CII as a Financial Adviser and presently operates as a management consultant to advisory firms in the UK.
Karen joined The Adviser Centre at its launch in 2014 and runs our administrative operations. She previously worked for Morningstar OBSR, where she was responsible for client reporting and model portfolio support. Following many years in administrative roles, she began working in the investment industry in 2005 for Forsyth Partners, moving to OBSR in 2008.
Mirka joined The Adviser Centre team in 2016 and manages our comprehensive meeting schedules, as well as providing general administrative support. Previously, she worked at Fidelity Investments International as a Sales Associate, responsible for the daily management of client queries and organising events. After a few years in administrative roles, she began working in the investment industry in 2002, joining Forsyth Partners to support the investment and research team.
Contact a member of the team by emailing [email protected].
Funds to buy, funds to hold and funds to watch: our distinctive Recommended, Established and Positive Watch lists are organised with practicality in mind.
1. Recommended list: “funds to buy”
2. Established list: “funds to hold”
3. Positive Watch list: “funds to watch”
By organising funds into three distinctive lists, we offer a succinct and practical way to help financial professionals identify suitable funds for their customers’ needs.
Our service typically features up to around 150 funds (drawn from most IA sectors) and is more focused than most other fund research services. The vast majority of funds feature on the Recommended list. There is no need for gradations in our opinion because we are so selective. In this way, the Recommended list functions as a panel of funds to buy – it is no more complicated than that. We believe they are equally worthy of consideration, taking into account their individual investment objectives and mandates.
Additionally, cognisant of the fact that some funds are no longer actively marketed but have a strong heritage and are widely owned by the intermediary market, we also maintain an Established list. Placing such funds on a separate list indicates that we maintain a high opinion, but that there may be reasons to consider alternatives.
Finally, we are always looking for new talent and/or differentiated products and we maintain a Positive Watch list to showcase funds that we believe have strong potential. We assess these funds against specific milestones and look for them to graduate to the Recommended list as these are gradually met. Should the expected degree of progress not be achieved, the fund would be removed from the service.
Unbiased, expert research, borne of years of experience in fund and investment analysis.
At The Adviser Centre, we aim to shine a light onto the actively-managed fund world with a view to helping financial professionals in their fund selection and suitability work. We apply a transparent, concise and thoughtful approach to the analysis of open-ended funds.
We believe that:
Therefore, the broad framework for our fund research is:
We consider the whole of the actively managed funds market available for sale in the UK, without prejudice. However, for practical reasons, and given our focus on the needs of financial advisers, the following basic thresholds must be met in order for our research to proceed:
We believe that a combination of quantitative and qualitative processes is the most effective way to analyse a fund’s DNA and arrive at a well-informed and balanced opinion.
The different stages of our process are summarised below:
At The Adviser Centre, our primary aim is to support financial professionals in their fund selection and suitability work through independently-minded research, borne of decades of industry experience. Our process is framed by the fundamental concepts of “quality”, “value” and “utility”, through which we answer the key questions of why to invest in a fund, how it is likely to behave and how it can be deployed.
The Adviser Centre team members are some of the most experienced in the fund research industry. We can always look forward to robust and constructive discussions and we have great respect for their views and perspectives, which, given the breadth of their fund and market knowledge, come from an extremely well-informed position.
We have known and worked with the team for several years and we value their experience and the insights they provide to our own investment process. The service differentiates itself by its more focused nature and the information on their factsheets is useful in emphasising a fund’s key mandate, exposure and style biases, helping to explain the risk/return journey that our customers can expect.
© The Adviser Centre | All Rights Reserved. The Adviser Centre is a trading name of Embark Investments Limited and is not authorised to carry out regulated activities. Embark Investments Limited is a company registered in England (No. 03383730) and a wholly owned subsidiary of Embark Group Limited, with its registered office at 33 Old Broad Street, London, EC2N 1HZ. Embark Investments Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (Registration No. 628981). This website is provided by The Adviser Centre and is a service for financial professionals only. Information on this website, including data and information from asset managers and third party sources, is deemed to be correct at the time of publication but The Adviser Centre takes no responsibility for its accuracy. Opinions are stated honestly and with careful consideration but they can change at any time and should not be solely relied upon. Information featured on the website does not constitute financial or investment advice.
Your use of this website is subject to the terms of use set out in the website. By continuing to use our website we will assume that you are happy to receive non-privacy intrusive cookies. Please be aware that if you disable cookies some functionality on the site will not work. Read our cookies policy to find out more about our cookie use and how to disable cookies.
Alternatively, if you are not a financial professional and are seeking financial advice, you may wish to visit unbiased.co.uk to search for a financial adviser.