Australia's top income share fund revealed for 2026
Plato Investment Management has been named Money's Best Australian Shares Income Fund as part of the 2026 Best of the Best awards.
Australian shares have a great track record for potential capital growth plus regular dividends. Our winner, Plato Investment Management's Australian Shares Income Fund has a healthy track record for delivering regular returns to investors.
Don Hamson, managing director, Plato Investment Management, explains, "Our income funds are highly active and diversified. We actively rotate in and out of companies where our modelling and research indicate strong forward-looking yields, capturing the distributions and share price upside in the lead-up to ex-dividend dates."
He adds, "A distinct feature at Plato is that we apply a consistent proprietary red flags screening process across all our investment funds. Before adding any company to our portfolios, it is assessed for more than 150 red flags covering areas such as governance, accounting discrepancies, and management behaviour.
"This core process not only helps us avoid potential landmines but also assists in identifying high-quality companies for investment," says Hamson.
How we found the best managed funds and ETFs
Rainmaker's managed funds and exchange traded funds awards consider a variety of factors to determine winners and finalists.
While overall medium term (five-year) performance is important, it is only one factor among many. Our quantitative process also considers investment risk, in the form of volatility (standard deviation) and downside volatility (the variability of negative returns generated by the fund). Accounting for a fund's risk is critically important, because it would be naive to simply award funds with the highest returns if they had also subjected investors to the highest risks.
To further improve our performance insights, we also examined performance persistence (or consistency) relative to the peer group using annual performance in each of the preceding five years.
In other words, performance persistence is more interested in rewarding investment providers that have a time series of annual returns that are competitive against the peer group, rather than just a higher average return for the period.
Finally, in some asset classes such as shares, an adjustment is made depending on whether a product has shown a persistent bias to style factors, such as value, growth and small-caps.
The best managers are chosen for having the most products shortlisted in most categories. The products are ranked in each category, and this ranking determines the number of points given to each product. The manager with the most points determines the winner.
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