These Are the 2017 SMA Managers of the Year

Investment Advisor and Envestnet | PMC announced the winners of the 2017 SMA Managers of the Year at the Envestnet Advisor Summit in Dallas on Wednesday.

The awards were presented by Tim Clift, chief investment strategist at Envestnet | PMC for Envestnet, and Jamie Green, former editor-in-chief of Investment Advisor magazine.

The analysts at Envestnet work hard to avoid the “curse of the winner,” Clift said, by looking for managers who have consistently outperformed and stick to their alpha theses.

“While we’re in Dallas, we’re not really interested in awarding cowboy managers,” Green said.

He added, “We tend to tilt toward independent, employee-owned firms with experienced managers and analysts who also have skin in the game by investing their own net worth in the strategies.”

Envestnet analysts identified outstanding managers in the separately managed account space and chose winners with input from Investment Advisor editors.

Envestnet | PMC’s proprietary, systematic and multi-factor methodology evaluates managers on both qualitative and quantitative criteria, including investment process and style, performance, firm profile, customer service and tax efficiency.

To be considered for an award, a manager’s team must have at least three years of experience running a strategy with $200 million or more in assets.

Congress Asset Management was recognized as the overall Manager of the Year, in addition to its award in the equity small- and mid-cap category.

Todd Solomon, portfolio manager on the Mid-Cap Growth strategy at Congress, said, “It’s great for me to be recognized, but it’s also my team. Working with Envestnet has been great. We saw a lot of great managers up there; some tough competition.”

Congress won in the same category in 2015 and was nominated in 2016. “This is the first time for the overall” award, Solomon said. “I know [Envestnet] does a lot of work, they work with a lot of very good managers, so I’m just proud that our efforts are getting recognized.”

This year’s winners are:

U.S. Equity Large Cap

ClearBridge Investments—Large Cap Growth

SKBA Capital Management—ValuePlus