JPM UK Equity Core, Royal London UK Dividend Growth and Dimensional UK Core Equity are among the few funds that have consistently avoided the IA UK All Companies sector’s fourth quartile over the past decade, Trustnet research has found.
In this series Trustnet is looking for funds with the best track record of avoiding the bottom quartile of its sector. We ran the quartile rankings of every fund in the Investment Association universe each quarter over the past 10 years, then identified how often each had avoided the fourth quartile.
There are no funds in the IA UK All Companies sector that escaped the fourth quartile entirely, but six have dodged the bottom of the sector in all but one quarter. These funds are shown in the table below, ranked by their total return over the 10 years to the end of March 2026.
Source: Finxl. All funds have minimum track record of 10 years. Total return in sterling between 1 Apr 2016 and 31 Mar 2026
Like we found with the IA Global sector, it is mainly passive funds that have achieved this: iShares UK Equity Index, Fidelity Index UK, L&G (N) Tracker Trust, abrdn UK All Share Tracker and CT FTSE All-Share Tracker are all index trackers.
The fund at the top of the table – JPM UK Equity Core, with a total return of 136% over the full period under consideration – is not an index tracker, however. It uses an ‘enhanced index’ approach, in which its managers adjust positioning slightly away from the market to gain exposure to the value, quality and momentum investment styles.
Analysts at Rayner Spencer Mills Research said: “The fund is designed to be a core position to give exposure to the UK stock market. The fund has stock and sector limits of 30bps relative to the index. This is to keep the core exposure to the index but allow the managers to have some flexibility to outperform the index. The fund can be used alongside satellite holdings biased to high conviction areas of the UK market.”
Widening the search to funds that have racked up no more than five quarters in the IA UK All Companies sector’s bottom quartile gives another 23 but, again, many of these are index trackers.
Source: Finxl. All funds have minimum track record of 10 years. Total return in sterling between 1 Apr 2016 and 31 Mar 2026
Royal London UK Dividend Growth is the first fund on the list, thanks to spending just two quarters in the peer group’s bottom quartile while generating a 140.4% total return.
Managed by equity income veteran Richard Marwood, the fund looks for companies with undervalued long-term cashflows. More than half of the portfolio is in large- or mega-caps and another 34% is in mid-caps, with Shell, AstraZeneca and HSBC being the largest holdings.
Dimensional UK Core Equity is next with two quarters in the fourth quartile and a 130.4% total return.
The strategy sits between pure index tracking and traditional active management. Dimensional applies a systematic, evidence-based approach that overweights UK stocks with higher expected returns, while excluding smaller growth companies with low profitability.
Another notable fund on the list is JPM UK Equity Plus. It is a sister strategy to the aforementioned JPM UK Equity Core but has a more aggressive approach that allows it to deviate further from the index and make greater use of shorting, contributing to a 177.9% return over the 10 years we looked at but five quarters in the bottom quartile.
Rayner Spencer Mills Research said: “The long/short strategy allows the portfolio managers greater conviction in their best ideas whilst also being mindful of the benchmark. There is a strong repeatable process which has navigated different investment regimes successfully and when there is a headwind to the strategy, the portfolio managers have learnt not to deviate from the process, which has brought strong results over the long term.”
Schroder Prime UK Equity is another fund that takes an index-aware approach. Manager Sue Noffke builds the portfolio to be style-neutral and monitors risk through different lenses such as stock specific, factor and sector exposures.
Sonal Sagar’s CT Responsible UK Equity fund is an active fund that invests in quality companies with robust balance sheets, good governance and strong sustainability characteristics.
To achieve the strategy’s responsible investing aims, Sagar seeks to avoid companies with unsustainable business practices, invest in those making a positive contribution and work to improve companies through engagement and voting.
Not all funds on the list invest directly in UK equities. Liontrust MA UK Equity is a fund of funds product managed by James Klempster. It holds funds such as iShares 100 UK Equity Index, JOHCM UK Dynamic and Artemis Income.
FP Russell Investments UK Growth Assets also uses a multi-manager approach to bring in “the best specialist managers and precisely blend them to take advantage of a range of investment opportunities”, among them Baillie Gifford.