Morningstar Awards: Fidelity awarded Advisors' Choice

2014 marks the fourth year in a row that Fidelity has won Advisors' Choice Fund Company of the Year.

Ashley Redmond 28 November, 2014 | 6:00PM
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Ashley Redmond: I'm Ashley Redmond for Morningstar.ca and I am here with Fidelity's Jaime Harper. He just picked up Advisors’ Choice Fund Company of the Year for the fourth year in a row. Jaime congratulations.

Jaime Harper: Thank you very much.

Redmond: Jaime, what makes Fidelity stand out in the eyes of advisors?

Harper: I think it comes down to several things that we focused a lot of our attention on—apart from our continual and unrelenting focus on what advisors are looking for in a fund company—it really comes down to our focus on excellent investment performance. [As well as], best-in-class wholesaling, top quality support from the back office and a major focus for us over the last number of years has been on quality products.

So regularly coming out with products which advisors are looking for; always taking into consideration what we see in terms of flows in the industry and then trying to be ahead of the curve. I think this past year has been a good example of that. We saw a lot of the flows moving towards global balance products, the year before that it was U.S. equity and so we came out with a couple of products last May and those products turned out to be the strongest launch in Fidelity Canada's 27 year history.

Redmond: Can you tell me about a specific product or the one you just mentioned that you are most proud of in 2014?

Harper: Well, there are two that we launched. One of them was NorthStar Balanced, which basically combines our go-anywhere equity product NorthStar Fund with Dan Dupont and Joel Tillinghast, two of North America's best money managers and marrying that up with a go-anywhere Tactical Income, high income sleeve. That’s proven to be very, very successful. Then we also launched a Tactical High Income Fund; both of those products have garnered more than half a billion in assets for us.

Redmond: Fantastic. And what should investors expect from Fidelity in 2015?

Harper: I think it's going to be more of the same. As I said before our focus has been on expanding our sales force. It's been on regularly coming out with products, which meet the demands of advisors. Also, one of the things that we have been doing a lot of lately is local insight events across the country. This past year we did more than 20 events in large cities and small towns and what we do is we bring two of our portfolio managers out in front of anywhere from 75 to 200 clients.

In addition to that we bring our tax expert, who in this past year has been covering an issue which a lot of advisors have not been that conversant with, and that is the impact from U.S. tax laws which effect U.S. person. So, U.S. persons living in Canada holding mutual funds, there has been a tax impact and we have a solution. So, we've been basically informing advisors of what they need to know and providing them with the solutions for their clients.

Redmond: They obviously think that you are doing a great job.

Harper: I think the fourth year in row is pretty special.

Redmond: Alright congratulations Jaime.

Harper: Thanks very much.

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Ashley Redmond

Ashley Redmond  Ashley Redmond is a Vancouver-based freelance writer.

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