IRELAND - Ireland has become the first country to have its local investment performance standards verified as a country version of GIPS - the Global Investment Performance Standards.

And both the UK’s National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) sponsored UKIPS performance standards and the existing Swiss performance benchmark, are to follow suit and become GIPS verified in the coming months.

The Irish standards, drawn up by the Irish Association of Investment Managers, were submitted for alignment with GIPS at a recent Los Angeles meeting of the Investment Performance Council (IPC) – the body that oversees all of US based AIMR’s (Association of Investment Management Research) investment performance standard activities.

The voluntary GIPS standards are a set of ethical criteria through which investment managers can make performance presentations that are based on comparable, fair and full information. The standards are designed to stop managers from cherry picking investment results to present to potential clients.

John Stannard, chairman of the IPC: “ There has been a lot of discussion around the issue that now we’ve got GIPS how do we get people on board with it when they have got their own standards.
“ If they haven’t got any standards then it is a piece of cake because countries are saying that they’ll either use it (GIPS) in English or translate it.
“ The ‘country version’ of GIPS enable countries to slowly change their own versions over time to adopt GIPS, which is the core of what they are actually doing, and incorporate local practices in a way that is not against the spirit of what they are already doing.”
“ The Irish are now formally the first country version of GIPS.

Stannard says the submissions from the Switzerland and the UK will be considered later in the year.

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