American Century Investments Wins 2021 Refinitiv Lipper's Best Overall Large Firm and Best Equity Large Group Awards

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Mar 11, 2021, 10:24 ET

KANSAS CITY, Mo., March 11, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- American Century Investments, a global asset manager with approximately $218 billion* in client assets, announced today that it has received the U.S. 2021 Best Overall Large Fund Family and Best Equity Large Fund Family Group Awards from the Refinitiv Lipper Fund Awards. According to Lipper, the awards are based on the Lipper Leader for Consistent Return rating, which is a risk-adjusted performance measure calculated over 36, 60 and 120 months. Refinitiv Lipper also states that the fund with the highest Lipper Leader for Consistent Return (Effective Return) value in each eligible classification wins the Refinitiv Lipper Fund Award.

"We are honored to be recognized by Refinitiv Lipper Fund Awards. As responsible stewards of our clients' capital, our investment team shares the common goal of delivering superior, long-term, risk-adjusted performance," said Victor Zhang, American Century Investments Chief Investment Officer. "Winning the Overall Large and Equity Large Group Awards is made possible through the dedication of our investment professionals and serves as a testament to our unwavering commitment to serve our clients."

In addition to winning two of the eight Group Asset Awards, American Century One Choice® In Retirement Portfolio is also being recognized for its 10 year performance. American Century's flagship One Choice Target Date portfolios are managed by Multi-Asset Strategies Chief Investment Officer Rich Weiss, Portfolio Managers Scott Wilson, Vidya Rajappa, John Donner and Radu Gabudean. The investment team manages $44.4 billion in assets under management as of 12/31/2020.

"We are thrilled that One Choice In Retirement has been recognized by Refinitiv Lipper Fund Awards for its 10-year performance," said Weiss. "Our signature target-date portfolios were created to help investors take a more active role in planning for their financial future."

Based on the performance data from Refinitiv Lipper, American Century also was named one of the top 10 Best Fund Families by Barron's.**

American Century Investments is a leading global asset manager focused on delivering investment results and building long-term client relationships while supporting research that can improve human health and save lives. Founded in 1958, American Century Investments' 1,400 employees serve financial professionals, institutions, corporations and individual investors from offices in New York; London; Frankfurt; Hong Kong; Sydney; Mountain View, Calif.; and Kansas City, Mo. Jonathan S. Thomas is president and chief executive officer, and Victor Zhang serves as chief investment officer. Delivering investment results to clients enables American Century Investments to distribute over 40 percent of its dividends to the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, a 500-person, non-profit basic biomedical research organization. The Institute owns more than 40 percent of American Century Investments and has received dividend payments of $1.7 billion since 2000. For more information about American Century Investments, visit www.americancentury.com.

The Refinitiv Lipper Fund Awards, granted annually, highlight funds and fund companies that have excelled in delivering consistently strong risk-adjusted performance relative to their peers. The Refinitiv Lipper Fund Awards are based on the Lipper Leader for Consistent Return rating, which is a risk-adjusted performance measure calculated over 36, 60 and 120 months. The fund with the highest Lipper Leader for Consistent Return (Effective Return) value in each eligible classification wins the Refinitiv Lipper Fund Award. For more information, see lipperfundawards.com Although Refinitiv Lipper makes reasonable efforts to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the data contained herein, the accuracy is not guaranteed by Refinitiv Lipper.

You should consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses carefully before you invest. The fund's prospectus or summary prospectus, which can be obtained by visiting americancentury.com, contains this and other information about the fund, and should be read carefully before investing.

A One Choice® Target Date Portfolio's target date is the approximate year when investors plan to retire or start withdrawing their money. The principal value of the investment is not guaranteed at any time, including at the target date.

Each target-date One Choice® Target Date Portfolio seeks the highest total return consistent with American Century's proprietary asset mix. Over time, the asset mix and weightings are adjusted to be more conservative. In general, as the target year approaches, the portfolio's allocation becomes more conservative by decreasing the allocation to stocks and increasing the allocation to bonds and money market instruments.

American Century Investment Services, Inc., Distributor.

*Firm assets under supervision as of February 22, 2021.

**American Century ranked 9 out of 53 for one-year performance. Link to methodology("How We Rank the Fund Families").

How We Rank the Fund Families
All mutual and exchange-traded funds are required to report their returns (to regulators as well as in advertising and marketing material) after fees are deducted, to better reflect what investors would actually experience. But our aim is to measure manager skill, independent of expenses beyond annual management fees. That's why we calculate returns before any 12b-1 fees are deducted. Similarly, fund loads, or sales charges, aren't included in our calculation of returns.

Each fund's performance is measured against all of the other funds in its Refinitiv Lipper category, with a percentile ranking of 100 being the highest and one the lowest. This result is then weighted by asset size, relative to the fund family's other assets in its general classification. If a family's biggest funds do well, that boosts its overall ranking; poor performance in its biggest funds hurts a firm's ranking.

To be included in the ranking, a firm must have at least three funds in the general equity category, one world equity, one mixed equity (such as a balanced or target-date fund), two taxable bond funds, and one national tax-exempt bond fund.

Single-sector and country equity funds are factored into the rankings as general equity. We exclude all passive index funds, including pure index, enhanced index, and index-based, but include actively managed ETFs and so-called smart-beta ETFs, which are passively managed but created from active strategies.

Finally, the score is multiplied by the weighting of its general classification, as determined by the entire Lipper universe of funds. The category weightings for the one-year results in 2020 were general equity, 35.6%; mixed asset, 20.7%; world equity, 17.3%; taxable bond, 21.9%; and tax-exempt bond, 4.8%.

The category weightings for the five-year results were general equity, 36.2%; mixed asset, 20.9%; world equity, 16.9%; taxable bond, 21.6%; and tax-exempt bond, 4.4%. For the 10-year list, they were general equity, 37.5%; mixed asset, 19.5%; world equity, 17.3; taxable bond, 20.8%; and tax-exempt bond, 4.8%.

The scoring: Say a fund in the general U.S. equity category has $500 million in assets, accounting for half of the firm's assets in that category, and its performance lands it in the 75th percentile for the category. The first calculation would be 75 times 0.5, which comes to 37.5. That score is then multiplied by 35.6%, general equity's overall weighting in Lipper's universe. So it would be 37.5 times 0.356, which equals 13.35. Similar calculations are done for each fund in our study. Then the numbers are added for each category and overall. The shop with the highest total score wins. The same process is repeated to determine the five- and 10-year rankings.