What is the fund’s official benchmark?

A benchmark is a reference point. At its simplest, it is a way of asking whether a fund has delivered a better, worse or different outcome than a relevant alternative.

Does it match the fund’s investable universe?

A benchmark or peer group can be useful without being complete. The governance task is to document what the comparison proves, what it does not prove, and what additional context is needed before judging skill, failure or ongoing conviction.

Has the benchmark changed, and if so, why?

It may reflect a genuine evolution in the fund’s mandate, universe or investment process. But it should be treated as a governance event.

Is the peer group genuinely comparable?

A peer group may give a practical sense of how a fund compares with others that advisers and DFMs might review. But it is not always a clean benchmark. Two funds can sit in the same sector and be playing very different games.

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Infundly

Fund Benchmarking: Why Comparators Matter in Fund Review

Sheridan Admans
May 26
13 min read

A fund’s performance number only becomes useful when the comparator is understood. Benchmarks can sharpen fund review, but they can also mislead when they are mismatched, too broad, too narrow, style-insensitive or used without challenge. The question is not simply whether a fund has beaten its benchmark. It is whether the benchmark is the right yardstick, what the comparison proves, and what it leaves unanswered.

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