Why this investment manager topped the charts in 2026

Macquarie Asset Management has been named Money's Best Investment Manager as part of the 2026 Best of the Best awards.

• Find out how we chose the winners
• Order your copy of the bumper awards issue
• Check out more from Best of the Best 2026

Australia's financial services industry is the second largest contributor to our national economy, behind the mining sector, and managed funds are, in turn, a major component of the financial sector.

It takes a lot to reach the top - and stay on top, of the managed funds industry in Australia, but that's exactly what Macquarie Asset Management has achieved.

Macquarie has taken out the award for Best Investment Manager for the second year in a row. A key point of difference Macquarie Asset Management brings to the table is a focus on active rather than passive management.

Brent Andal, head of ANZ Wealth, Macquarie Asset Management, says, "At Macquarie Asset Management we believe active management is essential to providing long-term value for our investors."

Macquarie Asset Management certainly has size on its side. It is an international asset manager with approximately $941 billion in assets managed globally. These assets are spread across a diverse range of investment solutions including real assets, real estate, credit and equities and multi-asset options. It gives Macquarie's investors the benefit of choice and clever ways to achieve that all-important portfolio diversification.

Andal notes that MAM has a strong track record of "providing differentiated investment solutions to our investors across public and private markets while maintaining focus on areas where we have an edge and where we think we can generate alpha (above-benchmark returns) long term".

He adds that MAM takes "a long-term approach to investing as a fiduciary for our clients. Our investment teams leverage deep research, analysis and market data to uncover opportunities that may be missed by passive approaches". Andal further explains the strength of Macquarie's investment teams.

"In today's dynamic markets, their expertise enables us to respond swiftly to evolving risks and changing conditions."

While Macquarie Asset Management offers a variety of unlisted managed funds to retail investors, it also has a line-up of exchange traded funds (ETFs). However, rather than focus on passively managed ETFs that aim to match market returns, the common thread behind Macquarie Asset Management's ETFs is that they are actively managed.

In this way, Macquarie Asset Management lets investors benefit from the transparency and convenience of an ETF structure, while accessing new options for portfolio diversification and the potential for index outperformance.

As Andal says, "With a commitment to excellence, our investment experts strive to consistently outperform benchmarks and deliver superior returns to meet client needs."

How do you find 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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