Can better data help rebuild trust between investors and fund pickers?

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To the outside observer, the business of researching and selecting funds has always been a rather elusive process, with the exact criteria for a recommendation often hard to decipher.

Indeed, in most cases, it is a complex mix of quantitative and qualitative factors, brought together by professional instinct and finished with a dash of subjectivity. All of which sounds great when the resulting investment pans out nicely. Fund selection is as much an art as it is a science, and this adds to the allure of ‘star' selectors at the top of their game. However, as we have seen in recent years, high-profile scandals leaving investors with a lighter wallet and a bitter taste not only result in personal falls from grace, but a broader, more systemic erosion of trust in the a...