UK market indices rose strongly this morning after news of the landslide Labour Party election victory - widely expected - was absorbed by analysts.

Data provider Defaqto has named the UK’s top performing Managed Portfolio Services (MPS) in its inaugural Defaqto MPS Comparator Awards.

The new awards are designed to identify “consistently strong” MPS performance based on five years of discrete risk-adjusted measures.

The Defaqto MPS Comparator, launched recently, compares like for like portfolios.

The top performers for 2024 have been named across five MPS Comparator cohorts: Defensive; Cautious; Balanced; Growth and Adventurous. The overall winners across the Comparator cohorts were Rivers, Credo, Fundhouse, Waverton and Tatton (see below).

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Each Comparator has five awards: an overall winner (the most consistent performing portfolio) and four highly commended winners (the next four most consistent performing portfolios in the respective cohort).

Only those portfolios which provided real investment performance were eligible.

The 2024 winners are:

Comparator: Defensive

Comparator: Cautious

Comparator: Balanced

Comparator: Growth

Comparator: Adventurous

Source: Defaqto 

John Milliken, CEO at Defaqto, said: “Everyone in the industry is talking about MPS, so we’re very excited to share this new insight and publicly recognise top-performing providers. With many products in the market, congratulations to the providers who have been awarded this year.”

Andy Parsons, insight manager for investments at Defaqto, said: “Our methodology is linked to the release of our MPS Comparator tool. We have computed the leading models, per peer group, on a risk adjusted, 5-year discrete net, performance basis, as at the end of March 2024. 

“The awards are at individual platform MPS portfolio level and to aid the selection process, we identified the most consistent MPS portfolios within each Comparator based on a variety of quantitative data measurements. The results were then assessed and reviewed by the Defaqto Investment Committee, and the top performers rewarded with ‘Winner’ and ‘Highly Commended’ awards.”

Defaqto’s DFM coverage reviews over 120 DFMs and around 2,700 portfolios, providing data such as performance, fees, and asset allocation. Defaqto updates MPS performance data monthly. 

MPS Comparator is available for advisers and providers and it will be available soon on Defaqto Engage, the fintech’s Financial Planning suite.

Defaqto is owned by Fintel which also owns SimplyBiz.

The Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment professional body, which awards the Certified Financial Planner designation in the UK, has appointed Jamie Lang, Chartered FCSI, as its new Isle of Man branch committee President.

New research suggests that the advice gap may have widened since the FCA’s Consumer Duty requirements arrived nearly a year ago.

The FCA has confirmed that advisers in the A.13 block will see fees rise by 9.8% for 2024/25, according to its final regulatory fee and levy rates.

Two pension adviser firms have been declared as failed by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

The FCA is to hold a livestreaming webinar event on 31 July to mark the one year anniversary of the Consumer Duty.

Wealth management trade body PIMFA has urged the Financial Ombudsman Service to push up proposed cases fees for CMCs to better share the burden of costs between between claimants and firms hit by a complaint.

Fintech and adviser support firm Fintel has completed the acquisition of support services firm Threesixty from Abrdn for £14.6m, the firm announced today.

Investment manager and Financial Planning group Abrdn has linked with the University of Edinburgh to develop an AI investment tool.

The project is part of a Centre for Investing Innovation partnership that aims to harness AI to support the firm’s investment research process.

The project aims to create a generative AI-powered research companion, that will combine an enhanced large language model with statistical inference to support Abrdn’s investment teams.

The company said the focus will be on expanding the breadth of securities that its investment teams can review, as well as the depth of quantitative analysis that they are able to draw from.

The firm said it differs from other AI technologies being deployed by asset managers in investment decision-making that focus on identifying specific risks or analysing prior decisions.

Instead the tool will look at a broader range of securities to deliver more timely and richer insights. Crucially the tool will go beyond delivering an enhanced version of a customised large language model by adding what the firm calls a ‘statistical brain’.

Researchers from the Schools of Informatics and Maths at the University of Edinburgh are exploring how existing large language models (LLMs) might be adapted and enhanced to synthesise the huge amount of data needed to make investment decisions.

The new tool would also provide explainability of how decisions are reached.

Echo Yang, investment director at Abrdn and the project co-lead said: “AI has the power to make a substantial contribution to our existing investment processes but like any new technology it has to be harnessed correctly to deliver real benefits.

“By working with the University of Edinburgh’s world-class team we can bring the best academic insight, and match that with Abrdn’s experience of markets and investing.

“There is an ever-increasing range of data points to analyse as we constantly seek to deepen our analysis of the markets we invest in. Through exploration of using generative AI to support our investment teams, we have the potential to deliver even more value for our clients.”

The project being announced forms part of a wider relationship already in place between Abrdn and the University of Edinburgh, supported by Edinburgh Innovations, the University’s commercialisation service. In April 2022, the two parties announced the creation of the Centre for Investing Innovation, a £7.5m strategic partnership to address challenges facing the investment and asset management sector across three main areas: sustainability, thematic investing and innovating investing. The Centre sits within the Edinburgh Futures Institute, a new futures-focused space for learning, research, and innovation at the University of Edinburgh.

The University of Edinburgh has recently established two AI hubs for causal AI and electronics, as well as launching the Generative AI Laboratory (GAIL) last year. The University was recently ranked first in the world for Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure (Times Higher Education Impact Rankings 2024).