This win follows a series of improvements to the platform, including the launch of market leading tax and trading tools just last month.

BT Wrap National Manager Nicholas Bowley was thrilled with the win saying it was the result of continued development and investment in BT Wrap and a great reflection of its continued focus on building a market leading investment platform for self-managed super funds.

“Our platform is about creating efficiency and value for advisers and their clients. This award reflects our ongoing commitment to ensuring we are always at the front of the market.

“We work closely with advisers to ensure all changes are driven by and reflect their needs and the needs of their clients.

“In the last three months alone we have implemented a number of new features including changes to make it even easier for advisers to trade equities and managed funds and proactively manage tax outcomes of certain sales when trading.”

The judges said: “BT Wrap is a comprehensive, all-round product. This includes providing a combination of an extensive investment option menu and a comprehensive range of features, terms and conditions. These are supported by a competitive fee structure. Being the top player in the platform market, BT Wrap continues to develop market-leading features and functionalities. In particular its model portfolio tools aim to reduce administrative burden and to assist advisers to implement tailored advice for clients. Its new methodology boosts capital gains tax optimisation.”

BT Wrap is the largest platform in Australia with more than $41 billion of funds under administration.

Last year BT Wrap was named Best Superannuation Platform at the Awards.

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The awards aim to provide a comprehensive, independent evaluation of banking, insurance and investment products in the market and are recognised as the industry’s premier awards.

In Australia, PIMCO manages more than $30 billion across a comprehensive range of fixed interest and risk overlay strategies for large superannuation funds, institutional investors, self managed super funds, and thousands of individual investors.

PIMCO’s portfolio team is headed by Robert Mead, Head of Portfolio Management. Mr Mead said PIMCO was pleased to have won the award for the second successive year.

“The PIMCO team always focuses on identifying the safest forms of fundamentally sound risk-adjusted returns,” Mr Mead said.

“In Australia, we achieve this by preferring Residential Mortgage-backed Securities (“RMBS”), Australian bank bonds and other high quality corporate bonds.

“In this New Normal environment, we expect ongoing market volatility, which requires increased allocations to liquid assets in order to be able to capitalise upon opportunities as they arise,” Mr Mead said.

Morningstar, a leading provider of independent investment research which undertook the fund analysis for the Financial Review Smart Investor Blue Ribbon Awards 2011, said the EQT/PIMCO Australian Bond Fund is a top-notch vehicle for investing in Australian bonds.

“Robert Mead leads a high-powered and extremely proficient team, plugged into the immense network of knowledge wielded by the firm and drawing on the house’s acknowledged mastery of and expertise in fixed interest investing,” Morningstar said. “These characteristics all make the PIMCO/EQT Australian Bond Fund a champion among fixed income funds.”

The primary filter for the Financial Review Smart Investor Blue Ribbon Awards is Morningstar Recommendations, which are qualitative assessments. The next filter is quantitative, based on peer-relative risk-adjusted assessments of fund performances over one, three, five, and where applicable 10 years. The final filter is the one-year performance ranking, as these are annual awards.

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Advance also won the multi-sector conservative category for the Advance Defensive Multi-Blend Fund and the multi-sector growth category for the Advance Balanced Multi-Blend Fund.

Head of Advance Investment Solutions Patrick Farrell said the win reflected the hard work of a committed team with decades of investment expertise.

“We have access to the latest expertise locally and globally and as a result our multi-manager funds benefit from the best possible thinking and expertise. We believe we have a unique investment process and we’re delighted that we’ve been recognised for this.”

According to research house Morningstar, which judged the award, Advance was a worthy winner whose people, processes and risk-adjusted performance, particularly in the last year, represent an exemplary manager relative to its competitors. 

Two of Advance’s funds were also named as finalists in the multi-sector balanced and large cap world shares categories.

Advance is a specialist asset management business within BT Financial Group. Its focus is on asset allocation and risk management, implemented through a multi-manager process, providing investment opportunities across a range of asset classes, including shares, property, fixed interest and cash.

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