SEI Canadian Fund Recognized for Award-Winning Performance in 2017

TORONTO, Feb. 6, 2018 /CNW/ -- SEI Investments Canada Company (SEI) today announced its Moderate Fund received Fundata's FundGrade A+™  Award in the "Canadian Fixed Income Balanced" category out of 592 funds for the 2017 calendar year. The FundGrade A+ Award is given annually to investment funds and their managers who have shown consistent, outstanding, risk-adjusted performance through the year.

The SEI Moderate Fund is part of SEI's Goals-Based Funds offering. It invests in a selection of underlying funds, which utilize a manager-of-managers investment strategy, combining multiple specialist portfolio managers, each of whom is responsible for managing a portion of the portfolio in accordance with a specific mandate.

"Our manager-of-managers approach serves as the foundation for our portfolio strategies, which aim to reduce volatility and manage risk," said Andy Mitchell, Managing Director of SEI Canada. "We are honoured to be recognized for one of SEI's diversified solutions. This award is a testament to our investment philosophy, which is to help investors reach their goals."

Performance for Class F units of the Moderate Fund for the period ended December 31, 2017, is as follows: 4.4% (1 year), 4.6% (3 year), 5.7% (5 year), 4.9% (10 year) and 5.0% (since inception, June 7, 2006). Performance shown is for Class F units, net of the Fund's management fees payable to SEI. Performance does not reflect any advisory fees that may be payable to the dealer.

SEI Investments Canada Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of SEI Investments Company (NASDAQ: SEIC), is the Manager of the SEI Funds in Canada.

Commissions, trailing commissions, management fees and expenses all may be associated with mutual fund investments.  Please read the prospectus before investing.  The indicated rates of return are the historical annual compounded total returns including changes in security value and reinvestment of all distributions and do not take into account sales, redemption, distribution or optional charges or income taxes payable by any security holder that would have reduced returns.  Mutual funds are not guaranteed, their values change frequently and past performance may not be repeated.

About SEI
Now in its 50th year of business, SEI (NASDAQ: SEIC) is a leading global provider of investment processing, investment management, and investment operations solutions that help corporations, financial institutions, financial advisors, and ultra-high-net-worth families create and manage wealth. As of December 31, 2017, through its subsidiaries and partnerships in which the company has a significant interest, SEI manages, advises or administers $861 billion in hedge, private equity, mutual fund and pooled or separately managed assets, including $337 billion in assets under management and $518 billion in client assets under administration. For more information, visit: seic.com.

*Figures are in US dollars.

About SEI Canada
SEI founded its Canadian business in 1983, pioneering innovative asset management techniques for institutional investors. Today, SEI offers integrated investment management and strategic advice solutions to help institutional investors achieve their organizational goals and fulfill fiduciary responsibilities. Capitalizing on its investment expertise, SEI began offering investment solutions to retail investors through investment advisors in 1994. The investment approach provides multi-manager, globally diversified strategies with an appropriate home-country bias for Canadian retail investors. SEI's Goals-Based strategies, Strategic Asset Allocation strategies and Asset Class Funds are available through select dealer relationships. For more information, visit seic.com/en-ca.

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. Its database contains data on over 35,000 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. For more information see www.fundata.com.

About the Fundata FundGrade™ methodology
The objective of FundGrade is to rank and grade Canadian investment funds, on a monthly basis, against their peers using risk-adjusted performance metrics. Letter grades from A to E are used. Each month, FundGrade ratings are allocated as follows: 'A' is used for the top 10%; 'B' for the next 20%; 'C' for the middle 40%; 'D' for the next 20%; and 'E' for the bottom 20%. Ratings change on a monthly basis. The FundGrade rating system incorporates up to 10 years of history and uses three risk-adjusted performance metrics that are well known and widely accepted in the investment industry: (1) Sharpe Ratio—a measure of a fund's excess return relative to total risk. It is calculated by subtracting the risk-free rate from the fund's return and dividing by the standard deviation. (2) Sortino Ratio—a measure of a fund's excess return relative to downside risk. It is calculated by subtracting the minimum acceptable return from the fund's return and dividing by the downside deviation. (3) Information Ratio—a measure of a fund's active return relative to its tracking error. It is calculated by subtracting the benchmark return from the fund's return and dividing by the standard deviation of the difference between the return of the fund and the return of the benchmark.

See www.fundata.com/images/FundataFundgradeMethodology.pdf for specific details of FundGrade's ranking algorithm. To make the grades relevant, funds are only measured against similar investment products with comparable investment mandates. FundGrade uses the fund classification standards that have been defined by the Canadian Investment Funds standards Committee (CIFSC). Funds are ranked and graded within CIFSC categories.

About the FundGrade A+ methodology
The FundGrade A+ Rating is a supplemental calculation to the FundGrade ratings and is performed at the end of each calendar year. Eligible funds must have received a FundGrade rating for each month in the previous calendar year. A score is assigned to each monthly FundGrade rating, as follows: A grade = 4; B grade = 3; C grade = 2; D grade = 1; E grade = 0. For each fund a 'GPA-style' calculation is made by adding up the values for the monthly scores and dividing by 12. Any fund with a GPA of 3.5 or higher receives a FundGrade A+. For specific details of FundGrade's ranking algorithm, see www.fundata.com/images/FundataFundgradeMethodology.pdf. FundGrade A+ was designed to identify not only the best-performing funds, but also the most consistent. 

SOURCE SEI