Fund research specialists Lipper is offering a new fund- scoring service which rates funds in terms of consistent performance and capital preservation.
The Lipper Leaders ratings will be published every month with a list of the top-rated funds available on a new website at www.lipperleaders.com.
Funds will get scores of between one and five in each performance category, with one being the best and five the worst.
The consistent return scores are based on how much excess return a fund makes compared with its sector peers over a three-year period.
The capital preservation rating looks at the difference between a fund&#39s best and worst three-month performance in the past three years. The lower the difference, the better the capital preservation rating.
The service will be available through Lipper&#39s paid research platform, Hindsight 5, which includes regular performance data and analysis on the entire universe of UK retail investment funds.
The service can be bought by IFAs for between £500 and £1,000 per workstation.
Global marketing director Steve Lipper says: "The touchstone of the Lipper Leaders system is relevance to the investor. This is demonstrated in two ways. First, the Lipper Leaders system allows inv-estors to choose the criteria most important to them and, second, it calculates scores based on comparison with the full universe of funds available to an investor in their country.