APAFS renews sponsorship of GIPS

HAGATNA, Guam—The Asia Pacific Association for Fiduciary Studies (APAFS) and the CFA Centre for Financial Market Integrity (CFA Centre) jointly announced that the CFA Centre-sponsored Investment Performance Council (IPC) has voted to acknowledge the APAFS as an official sponsor of the Global Investment Performance Standards, or GIPS® standards, for the Micronesian region. The GIPS standards are well-recognized with high compliance levels amongst key financial centers in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa, and the Far East.

Although the activities of the GIPS standards are funded and administered by the CFA Centre, their success is the result of an alliance of sponsors with experts from a variety of fields within the global investment industry. These key industry groups have been involved in and contributed significantly to promoting and developing the GIPS standards. The APAFS was the 27th group to join this alliance in 2006.

Roland

“We are very proud to be once again selected to continue the important role of promoting the GIPS standards in Micronesia. In continuing as a sponsor we will jointly cooperate with the CFA Centre in setting best practices in investment performance,” said Daniel A. Roland, CIMA®, AIFA®, APAFS executive director. Roland added that as a GIPS sponsor, the APAFS will continue to “ensure that the foregoing standards will be applicable to Micronesia and that investment performance calculation and presentation can be compared from one place to another.”

Kent

Cindy S. Kent, director, Global Investment Performance Standards, CFA Institute, said “We are pleased to renew our partnership with the APAFS as the endorsed GIPS Standards Sponsor in Micronesia, and look forward to working together with APAFS and its institutional fund membership over the coming years.” Ms. Kent added that “APAFS’s leadership provides a model for other institutional fund sponsor associations and I applaud the commitment of APAFS to actively promote fiduciary best practices such as the GIPS standards.”

Based on the principles of fair representation and full disclosure, the GIPS standards provide an ethical framework for the calculation and presentation of investment performance for investment management firms. The GIPS standards benefit both the investment management firms and their current and potential investing clients. Global standardization of investment performance reporting gives investors around the world the additional transparency they need to compare investment managers and will allow managers to compete for new business in foreign markets.

“From the plan sponsors’ perspective, the major benefit of the GIPS standards is to advocate high quality and a unified approach in performance presentation practice and hence, provides users with a greater degree of confidence in the performance data being presented by prospective service providers,” commented Gerard Cruz, Trustee, Government of Guam Employees Retirement Fund, and Chairman of the APAFS Board of Governors.

APAFS is a non-profit educational and charitable association founded in 2000 for and by, representatives from public and private institutional funds from around the Asia Pacific Region. The goal of APAFS is to raise the level of understanding and standards of practice among fiduciaries in the region, so that they might provide the most prudent stewardship of the funds entrusted to their care. The interests of APAFS coincide with those of CFA Institute, whose mission is to lead the investment profession globally by setting the highest standards of education, integrity, and professional excellence. APAFS has a wide mix of members representing public funds, endowments and foundations and private sector retirement plans. More information can be found at www.apafs.org.

CFA Institute is the global, non-profit professional association that administers the Chartered Financial Analyst® curriculum and examination program worldwide and sets voluntary, ethics-based professional and performance-reporting standards for the investment industry. CFA membership includes the world’s 154,000 CFA charter-holders, as well as 151 affiliated professional societies and chapters in 165 countries and territories. CFA Institute is headquartered in Charlottesville, Virginia., USA, with additional offices in London, Hong Kong Beijing, Mumbai, Shanghai, Abu Dhabi and New York City. More information can be found at www.cfainstitute.org. (PR)