Research finds 50% of advisers recommend Vanguard funds

The latest Adviser Pulse Fund Preferences Report, featuring insights from a survey of some 350 advisers, has revealed Vanguard as the most popular fund manager among advisers.

The report, released by Agile Market Intelligence and based on data derived from October to December last year, revealed that as many as 50 per cent of advisers (180 advisers) recommend Vanguard to their clients.

The next most popular fund manager is Betashares, recommended by 114 advisers, followed by VanEck with 27 per cent of the vote.

Macquarie Investment Management garnered 23 per cent of the vote, followed by Colonial First State with 22 per cent, GQG Partners with 21 per cent, PIMCO Australia with 20 per cent and Perpetual with 16 per cent.

Metrics, Magellan and BlackRock garnered an equal 15 per cent of advisers each.

Unsurprisingly, given Vanguard’s strong showing as the most recommended fund manager, it also dominated the list of most popular individual funds – landing the three most popular slots and four of the top five.

The fund manager’s monopoly was broken by GQG’s Global Equity Fund, which was the fourth most popular fund among advisers, while La Trobe, T. Rowe Price, VanEck and PIMCO also featured in the top 10.

Agile Market Intelligence also asked advisers to select their most preferred research houses, with Lonsec emerging as the clear winner with 60 per cent of the vote. Lonsec was followed by Morningstar with 48 per cent and Zenith as the distant third with 11 per cent.

Looking at platforms, Colonial First State took the gong as the most used provider, with 29 per cent of advisers utilising one of its FirstChoice, Edge or FirstWrap platforms.

HUB24 came in second with 26 per cent of advisers using its platform, followed by Macquarie Wrap with 24 per cent, BT Panorama at 23 per cent, while Netwealth and Expand rounded out the top five with 19 per cent each.

North, meanwhile, was used by 15 per cent of advisers surveyed and Praemium picked up 8 per cent of the vote.