Contact The Rankings Service
Please contact The Rankings Service as follows:
To open an account for purchase of TRS Advisor Pro or TRS Reports
by phone, please call:(800) 257-6050 or e-mail to: openaccount@trsreports.com
To purchase TRS Reports, or
TRS
Reports
site licenses, annual subscriptions,
or individual
reports, please call: (800) 257-6050 or e-mail to: bundles@trsreports.com
To inquire about TRS Daily, customized TRS websites for advisors and advisory firms, TRS Fiduciary and Compliance Services for compliance officers and independent directors, or other applications and services from The Rankings Service, or TRS Market Masters Indexestm, please contact: (800) 257-6050 or e-mail to: trsservices@trsreports.com.
TRS Market Masters Indexes
The Rankings Service has developed a suite of proprietary indexes based on
the TRS manager-focused data and Analytics. Applications include the creation
of cutting-edge new financial services and instruments based on segmented manager-performance
information and categorization. Brokerage of Financial Services Firms interested
in finding out more about these TRS Indexes should e-mail trsservices@trsreports.com
or please contact TRS at (800) 257-6050.
TRS Compliance Pro and TRS Fiduciary Services
TRS Presents CCO's and Fiduciaries Two Key Value-added Elements:
1) Tracking Individual Manager Performance versus Funds, and
2) Truly Unaffiliated Objectivity in Privity with the Fiduciaries (CCO's and Independent Directors).
Major changes are afoot in mutual fund governance and accountability. A new SEC provision (Rule 38a-1) imbues Chief Compliance Officers (CCO's) with expanded authority, and requires that CCO's report directly to the independent directors. Another new SEC rule mandates independent directors to disclose the documents on which they rely when they undertake their annual review of investment advisor contracts and fee approvals under Rule 15c. Independent directors are further required to engage in annual self-assessment, and specifically consider how effectively they are handling the number of funds they oversee.
In layman's parlance, Chief Compliance Officers have been placed on the "hot seat" to monitor day-to-day fund operations -- and are henceforth accountable to independent directors, not management - and ultimately to the SEC. Independent directors are on notice that they must assert their fiduciary responsibility and not just "rubber stamp" fund company policies. The new requirements of Rule 15c with respect to contract review and fee approval hold out the prospect of unprecedented standards of care, performance evaluation, and regulatory inspections.
In short, previous deference to fund companies and related practices may not suffice. And further, previous relationships which obscured possible conflicts of interest may need to be reassessed. For example, in its recent report on "best practices," the Mutual Fund Directors Forum noted that independent directors might benefit from access to "unaffiliated" consultants in acquitting their Rule 15c contract review functions (although it also noted that attendant costs may outweigh the benefits).
TRS believes that, whatever the costs, independent directors should have access to independent data and analytics - i.e. not provided by either the fund company itself or instrumentalities hired by the fund companies to make the case for contract renewal and fee approval. Such instrumentalities might include firms which have other financial relationships with the fund companies which render them "affiliated", even if otherwise self-described as "independent." And the same applies to CCO's in taking measures to ensure their access to independent performance monitoring and measurement, including ongoing, forensic tracking, which is specifically accountable to them, rather than routed through the fund companies.
The Rankings Service, and TRS data and analytics, have the potential to provide significant value-added to the work of CCO's and mutual fund independent directors. In systematically spotlighting individual managers' performance, TRS can provide the independent directors and the chief compliance officers who report to them under the new SEC Rule 38a-1with customized data feeds and analytics to assist in acquitting their fiduciary duties generally, and their specific obligations for fund performance review, contract review, and fee negotiation/approval pursuant to Rule 15-c.
TRS also can serve as a basis of, and provide a framework for, informal commentary from boards to fund complex managements regarding managers' performance and the standards expected to merit future contract renewals and fee approvals.
TRS' ability to track individual manager performance on a daily basis - against peers and benchmarks and according to other custom, mission critical criteria - can provide Chief Compliance Officers and Fiduciaries with an ongoing, forensic risk management resource. This can serve as an "early warning system," flagging investment performance anomalies, discrepancies, and other indicia of potential problems. TRS data and analytics, and its assiduously independent approach, its goal of establishing contractual privity with compliance officials and independent directors, and not the investment advisors , can also help in the broader SEC mandate for risk assessment and conflict of interest disclosure, avoidance and ultimate elimination.
For further information on TRS' Custom Compliance Pro and Fiduciary Services,
please e-mail: trsservices@trsreports.com or please contact TRS at (800) 257-6050.
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