The Asset Managers Advisors Recommend To Their Peers

Lexington, MA – Vanguard, Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA), AQR and American Funds are the asset managers advisors are most likely to recommend to their peers. Those findings were announced today by Advisor Perspectives as part of its inaugural Advisors Choice™ awards.

The Advisors Choice™ awards are based on a survey of 1,554 financial advisors, constituting a broad cross-section of RIAs, wirehouse and independent broker-dealer representatives. Each participant was asked to identify the fund company or ETF sponsor it most often recommends to its peers in seven categories: U.S. equities, non-U.S. equities, passive/index-based investments, U.S. fixed income, non-U.S. fixed income, alternatives/commodities and overall. Participants had to type in the name of each fund company they recommended; they were not prompted with a selection list. This ensured that the results were unbiased.

DFA was ranked first in four of the seven categories, including being named the fund company advisors were most likely to recommend “overall.” Vanguard was in the top spot in two categories and AQR was named first in one category. American Funds was among the top three fund companies in three of the seven categories.

The Advisors Choice™ awards use a methodology based on the Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS was introduced in 2003 by the consulting firm Bain and Company and seeks to quantify customer loyalty to specific brands. In this case, the customer is the financial advisor and the brand is the fund company or ETF sponsor. Research has shown that firms achieve a high NPS – meaning that its customers are more likely to recommend it to peers – do so because they have achieved greater customer satisfaction. NPS has also shown to be predictive of firm growth and profitability.

Data for the Advisors Choice™ award was presented to clients of Advisor Perspectives’ Research Service. Data from the survey also showed the asset classes and product types to which advisors were most likely to increase allocations. Those results were previously announced here. The survey was conducted in November and December 2017.

Below are the final Advisors Choice™ awards for 2017.

Which fund family are you most likely to recommend to other advisors for U.S. equities?