What are the Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS)?

The Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS) are a set of ethical principles used by investment management firms in order to establish a globally standardised, industry-wide approach to creating performance presentations that communicate investment results to prospective clients.

The underlying spirit of the Standards is fair representation and full disclosure. CFA Institute created and administers the Standards and partners with local country sponsors around the world to promote the Standards.

To facilitate and maintain the integrity of the GIPS standards, new performance standards are created as needed by the industry and new procedures and controls are implemented to ensure that the Standards are consistently applied, interpreted, and expanded with broad public comments.

 

GIPS and Performa


Performa ensures that it remains at the forefront of GIPS development and it does that through a number of channels.

Performa constantly monitors the CFA Institute website for the GIPS standards (www.gipsstandards.org) and is in constant discussion with a number of industry groups and is continually striving to promote discussion amongst the peer group.

Performa is an active member of the UK Investment Performance Council (UKIPC), one of the country sponsors of GIPS. The UKIPC represents investors, data producers, fund managers and consultants in the United Kingdom and is sponsored by the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF), the Association of British Insurers (ABI) and the Investment Management Association (IMA). This joint leadership ensures that the needs of investors are at the heart of the Committee's work.

One of Performa’s founders, Anthony Howland, also sits on the Verification/Practitioner Committee whose purpose is to act as a forum for understanding issues that verifiers and third-party service providers face. This perspective will be shared with the Executive Committee, the Interpretations Subcommittee, and other EC Subcommittees in order to improve the quality of the GIPS standards and to ensure a consistency of approach, objectives, and understanding among verifiers and service providers globally.

Performa hosts both a User Focus Group and a Verifier Focus Group. These groups meet regularly to discuss industry issues and they provide good forums for networking and peer group dialogue.

In addition, Performa has an internal GIPS Working Party that monitors and addresses any changes to the standards.
Combined, this all ensures that Performa is abreast of the major changes and developments to the standards, so assuring clients that our product meets both the recommendations and requirements needed to obtain a GIPS compliant status.