Zenith deal strengthens MLC arm

MLC has entered into a strategic alliance with burgeoning research house Zenith Investment Partners in a move that will broaden the scope of MLC’s research arm, ThreeSixty Research.

The alliance has been confirmed by Zenith’s director and co-founder, David Smythe.

Commenting on the move, ThreeSixty head of research Lisa Boyce said Zenith would provide an additional touch point for the internal team and would assist in the formation of MLC’s Approved Investment Lists and other research services and solutions distributed to advisers.

“Our model is based on leveraging quality external research and complementing this with our strong internal research capability,” she said. “This enables us to focus our in-house research efforts on specialised research services, such as portfolio construction guidance and investment communications.”

The Zenith appointment will see it sitting alongside Lonsec, which was appointed by ThreeSixty in April 2007 as the primary provider of research on managed funds for financial advisers.

MLC pointed out that ThreeSixty’s agreement with Lonsec would remain unchanged despite the new Zenith relationship.

Zenith has emerged as an increasingly important player in the Australian research and ratings house environment and shown consistent improvement in Money Management’s Rate the Raters survey over the past three years.

However, the two ratings houses to consistently dominate the survey with respect to dealer group reach have been Lonsec and van Eyk, while Standard & Poor’s and Morningstar have tended to be ubiquitous in other segments.

Acknowledging his firm’s recent growth, Smythe said over the past two years its investment research presence had increased in size by two-thirds.