Spring 2026: the funds gaining and losing their Elite Ratings

By Darius McDermott on 30 April 2026 in News

Our spring investment committee meeting has brought a fresh set of updates to FundCalibre. We’ve added several new funds to the Elite Rated and Elite Radar universes, reflecting continued innovation, strong process discipline and attractive long-term opportunity sets across global markets. At the same time, we’ve made three changes to funds already on our list.

Two funds gain Elite Rated status

Aegon Global Equity Income

This fund focuses on generating reliable, growing dividends alongside long-term capital appreciation. Managed by a disciplined team running a concentrated portfolio of around 40–50 high-quality companies, the strategy focuses on strong balance sheets, resilient cash flows and dependable earnings growth. The process is anchored by a simple but effective six-metric dividend screen, combined with fundamental analysis that ensures income generation is driven by quality rather than yield chasing. We are particularly impressed by the fund’s repeatable framework and its ability to deliver steady performance across different market environments, avoiding both deep value traps and speculative growth exposure. This combination of discipline and consistency makes it a compelling long-term core global income holding.

Artemis SmartGARP Global Emerging Markets

This fund is a diversified emerging markets portfolio which combines quantitative analysis with human judgement. The strategy is built around Artemis’ proprietary SmartGARP quantitative screening tool, which identifies attractively-valued companies with strong financial characteristics. Importantly, this is not a pure quant product; the screen is complemented by the experienced management team with lead manager Raheel Atlas at the helm, to apply judgement to portfolio construction and risk management. This blend of systematic insight and human oversight has delivered a robust and repeatable process over time, with particular strength in value-led environments. The result is a disciplined and well-constructed emerging markets portfolio that offers a compelling way to access the asset class.

Three funds join Elite Radar

Artemis SmartGARP Global Smaller Companies

This new strategy extends Artemis’ proven SmartGARP framework into the global small-cap universe. The fund applies the same disciplined quantitative screening process, focusing on bottom-up company fundamentals, before layering in portfolio construction expertise from Raheel. Given the success of the SmartGARP approach across other regions, we see strong logic in applying it to global small-caps, where inefficiencies are often more pronounced. While still early in its development, the process is well-defined, and the combination of systematic selection with experienced oversight makes this an exciting addition.

WS Amati Global Innovation

This unconstrained global equity strategy focuses on companies benefiting from structural, real-world innovation across industries and technologies. The managers, Mikhail and Graeme, invest across a broad innovation spectrum, categorising holdings as pioneers, enablers and adopters, allowing them to capture value across the full innovation lifecycle. Their highly relevant and diverse technical backgrounds provide a strong foundation for analysing complex, innovation-driven businesses. The fund’s willingness to look beyond mega-cap incumbents and into less-covered areas of the market gives it a differentiated return profile. While deliberately underweight many dominant US technology names, it offers a complementary source of innovation exposure within a broader portfolio.

Baillie Gifford Cautious Managed

This fund provides a balanced multi-asset solution aiming for capital growth over rolling five-year periods through a 50/50 split between equities and bonds. It draws on the extensive resources of Baillie Gifford, combining insights from its regional equity teams and specialist fixed income managers into a highly diversified portfolio of around 400 holdings. The emphasis remains firmly on bottom-up security selection, with equities and bonds both managed with a long-term perspective. The structure offers investors a cost-effective way to access Baillie Gifford’s equity expertise while maintaining a meaningful defensive allocation, making it a well-constructed cautious option within the multi-asset space.

One fund moves to Elite Rated

SVS RM Defensive Capital

This fund moves from Elite Radar to Elite Rated following continued strong evidence of both process robustness and long-term performance consistency. Although positioned within the IA Targeted Absolute Return sector, this is best understood as a true multi-asset strategy, combining equities, bonds and diversifiers within a disciplined risk framework.

Managed by Dr Niall O’Connor, who has led the strategy for over a decade, performance remains a key strength, with the fund delivering 72% to investors over the past 10 years compared with 37% for the IA Targeted Absolute Return sector*. Importantly, it has outperformed the sector over 1, 3, 5 and 10 years, demonstrating consistency across different market environments. The combination of strong long-term results, a well-defined investment process and experienced leadership justifies its move into the Elite Rated universe.

One fund moves to Elite Radar

M&G Income and Growth

Following the retirement announcement of long-standing lead manager Steven Andrew, we have decided to move this fund to our Elite Radar. While succession planning has been carefully executed, with Stefano Amato (who has co-managed the fund since 2022) stepping into the lead role, we believe it is appropriate to adopt a more cautious stance during this transition phase. He will be supported by Will Hayes as deputy manager, providing additional continuity. Although the process remains intact and the team well-resourced, we want to see the new managers build up their own long-term track record.

One fund loses its Elite Rating

abrdn UK Mid-Cap Equity — This fund has lost its Elite Rating due to continued underperformance, which has seen the AlphaQuest score continue to deteriorate, reinforcing our concerns.

*Source: FE Analytics, total returns in pounds sterling, at 28 April 2026