A report released Tuesday by Cogent Research found that advisors’ level of commitment to certain fund companies is shifting, with T. Rowe Price and Legg Mason experiencing the biggest gains in advisor loyalty over the last year.
And while use of mutual funds among advisors has grown over the past year, the products of choice for advisors over the next couple years will shift to exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and separately managed accounts (SMAs), Cogent found.
Cogent’s mutual fund provider commitment scores and rankings, part of the research firm’s 2011 Advisor Brandscape report, are based on two measures: advisor loyalty to current providers and advisors’ anticipated future investment with those providers.
According to Cogent’s findings, which are based on a nationally representative sample of 1,643 retail investment advisors across all major distribution channels, The Hartford, Dodge & Cox, and Eaton Vance all lost significant ground relative to their 2010 rankings.
J.P. Morgan Funds ranked second overall this year behind Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA), which once again placed first.
Individual results across all 24 providers included in the ranking are indexed, and then separated into four groups: “Stars,” “Leaders,” “Players” and “Drifters.”