Fundata Announces the 2018 FundGrade A+(R) Award Winners

Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - January 25, 2019) - Fundata Canada Inc. is pleased to announce the winners of the Fundata FundGrade A+ Award for 2018. Awards were presented to 60 companies representing a total of 274 Canadian investment funds at Fundata's annual "Evening of Excellence" held on Thursday, January 24, 2019, at The Globe and Mail Centre in Toronto.

The FundGrade A+ Award is given annually to investment funds and managers who have shown consistent, outstanding, risk-adjusted performance throughout the year. The FundGrade A+ Award provides investors, advisors, and fund managers with a single, reliable, easy-to-understand fund-performance rating based on up to 10 years of history.

Receiving the A+ Award for 2018 were 168 mutual funds, 41 exchange-traded funds (ETFs), 62 segregated funds, and 3 Responsible Investing funds. Canadian investment funds have over $1.4 trillion in assets under management, while Fundata tracks over 43,000 investment funds. "The need for absolutely reliable performance data and a truly objective rating system has never been greater," said Janny Vincent, President and CEO of Fundata Canada Inc. Ms. Vincent added that Award winners join a small and highly prestigious group. "Tonight's 274 winning funds represent only about 5 percent of the eligible mutual funds, segregated funds, and ETFs tracked by Fundata," she said.

The FundGrade A+ Rating uses a score-based calculation to arrive at a grade-point average that ranks investment funds to determine the annual "best-of-the-best" ratings. The top-performing funds with a responsible investing mandate were honoured separately, with a winner from each of the Equity, Balanced, and Fixed Income categories.

The investment fund industry is a crucial component of Canadians' net worth accounting for nearly 40% of Canadians' financial wealth. And the ETF industry continues to grow, reaching a new high of $156 billion in assets under management at the end of 2018.

"We take pride in the fact that the FundGrade A+ Award has been embraced by our industry as a truly independent and objective benchmark, and an acknowledgement of superior fund performance," said Ms. Vincent.

For more information and a complete list of the funds receiving the Fundata FundGrade A+ Rating for the calendar year 2018, please visit www.fundgradeawards.com.

About Fundata Canada Inc.

Fundata Canada Inc. has been providing data aggregation and dissemination services to the Canadian media and financial marketplace since 1987. Fundata is a major provider in the distribution of fund and stock information in Canada. Our database contains data on over 43,000 investment fund products. Fundata provides customized data feeds, top-shelf analytics, cutting-edge software tools, and seamless hosted web solutions for fund companies, back office systems, investment planners, banks, trust companies, resellers and redistributors, and online, print, and broadcast media channels.

About the Fundata FundGrade A+ Rating

The FundGrade A+ Rating identifies funds that have been consistent FundGrade A-Grade performers over the past calendar year. It's the only objective rating system available in the market that's based solely on risk-adjusted performance history and that takes into account the consistency with which a fund is ranked at the top of its CIFSC class.

Contact: Reid Baker
Director, Analytics & Data
Phone: 416-445-5443 ext. 240
reid.baker@fundata.com