Platinum and the Neilson Foundation launch new scholarship.

The Financial Planning Association (FPA) today announced that Platinum Asset Management (Platinum), together with the Neilson Foundation will offer a scholarship to undergraduate students majoring in financial planning as part of their degree.

The scholarships will be offered through five Australian universities; Deakin, LaTrobe, Canberra, Western Sydney and Wollongong, and will commence at the beginning of the 2014 academic year. The scholarships offered will be for approximately 20 students annually at $15,000 per student. Platinum will also offer prizes for outstanding academic achievement.

In order to be considered, a student must be studying full time and major in financial planning. The scholarship will therefore typically be awarded to a second and/or third year undergraduate, as this is the time when students are most likely to start a major in financial planning.

Speaking about Platinum’s and The Neilson Foundation’s decision to offer the scholarship, Liz Norman, Director of Communications and Investor Services for Platinum, said that the aim was to incentivise students who are passionate about financial planning and who have aspirations to a long term career in the industry.

“We recognise the vital role that financial planners play not only in our business but the investment management community generally, and we see this scholarship as a way of supporting the efforts of the FPA to raise educational standards and encourage new talent into the industry.

“Full time studying can impose a significant financial burden on students, so we wanted to find a way to lessen the load. Recipients of the scholarship will be able to spend the money they receive in ways that will best help them reach their goal of becoming a financial planner,” she said.

Mark Rantall, CEO of the FPA, said that

“Raising the educational and professional standards of financial planners is a very clear focus for the FPA community. That is why we were so pleased to launch the National Accreditation and Curriculum Framework for financial planning degrees in November last year. The framework created a clear relationship between academia and the financial planning profession, and gave universities a clear understanding of the high standards of learning and graduate outcomes expected of financial planners.

“We believe that these scholarships will help cement and uphold those standards by rewarding promising and passionate students who are committed to a career in financial planning,” he said.

Mr Rantall concluded by thanking Platinum for its support of the financial planning profession and highlighted the broader significance of the scholarship.

“Australians have the right to feel confident in the educational qualifications and competence of people who call themselves financial planners; and this scholarship will help encourage talented future financial planners,” he said.

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From an initial universe of 34 Domestic Long/Short Funds Zenith has rated 3 funds “Highly Recommended”, 14 funds “Recommended” and 1 fund “Approved”. The 18 funds that were rated are shown below with their respective ratings and segregated into Global Funds, Regional Funds and Sector Funds.

Global Funds
Platinum International Brands Fund –  Highly Recommended
Platinum International Fund – Highly Recommended
Five Oceans Wholesale World Fund – Recommended
K2 Select International Absolute Return Fund – Recommended
PM Capital Absolute Performance Fund – Approved

Regional Funds
Platinum Asia Fund – Highly Recommended
K2 Asian Absolute Return Fund – Recommended
KIS Asia Long Short Fund – Recommended
Platinum European Fund – Recommended
Platinum Japan Fund – Recommended
Premium Asia Fund – Recommended
Premium China Fund – Recommended
8IP Asia Pacific Partners Fund – Recommended

Sector Funds
Platinum International Technology Fund – Recommended
Platinum International Health Care Fund – Recommended
Pengana Asia Special Events Fund – Recommended
Pengana Global Resources Fund – Recommended
Premium SAM Asia Property Fund – Recommended

Platinum’s Ratings – Zenith Maintains Strong View
Given the prevalent use of Platinum by our clients and the questions that have come up around the recent underperformance of some of Platinum’s funds, we thought it would be useful to provide a brief comment on why we have re-affirmed our strong ratings on Platinum’s suite of products post this year’s due diligence reviews.

While some of the Platinum funds have had softer performance numbers more recently, we are inclined to continue to back the manager. We note that Platinum takes very contrarian views on many stocks and themes in the market and that this style of management does not work consistently across the market cycle.

In more recent times the manager has been positioned in areas that have been overlooked and neglected by the market based on risk off trades. Zenith feels that investors that hold the course with Platinum are likely to be rewarded. Historically, given Platinum’s high conviction style, when performance has turned it tends to turn quite quickly.

Overall, Zenith believes that the level of quality across the Platinum team remains excellent and from the meetings with all of the portfolio managers across the firm we believe that they remain across all the issues in their portfolios.

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