Berry Asset Management’s Performance Tracker is a Great Step Towards Greater Transparency

Berry Asset Management’s decision to publish a Performance Tracker on its website is a very welcome step towards greater transparency in the industry

SUPER NEWS: BERRY Asset Management has added a Performance Tracker to its website which means clients will be able to get much greater transparency in how their investments are doing. It may even herald a transparency revolution in the wealth management industry.

The facility, by benchmarking portfolios to ARC’s industry average, allows HNWs to view how well Berry has performed over the past 6, 12 or 36 months against 40 other houses signed up to the Private Client Indices.

Jamie MacLeod, Berry’s CEO, says ‘This is the first time a private client wealth management firm has employed ARC data in this way.’

Many advisers will regard MacLeod’s move as bold. If rolled out across the industry, making performance data available will mean that clients are no longer kept in the dark as to how their portfolios are doing. It also means that clients may be more likely to move their portfolios from one company to another, decreasing high levels of ‘stickiness’ and making AUM more volatile.

‘It is another significant step forward in our ongoing efforts to provide clients with complete transparency,’ says Macleod. ‘That is entirely in the spirit of the Retail Distribution Review and the concept of best practice.’

Houses that are consistent performers have little to fear and everything to gain. Referrals are the best form of business development and Berry’s tracker is just the kind of hard evidence, rather than soft opinion, that private clients can pass on over dinner.

What will be said about the Pall Mall house in particular? Likely that the £658 million manager is a solid performer on the defensive side, with its model portfolio producing positive returns every year for a decade and outperforming ARC over three years by 23.4% to 16.8%.