Hymans Robertson, Drumnor Investments and Saltus head up the leaderboard of model portfolio service (MPS) providers that have the most model portfolios boasting the highest Crown Rating from FE fundinfo.
Awarded to model portfolios as well as open-ended funds and investment trusts, FE fundinfo's Crown Ratings are designed to help identify investments that have consistently outperformed their peers. The top 10% of portfolios receive five crowns, the next 15% get four crowns and the remaining three quartiles are for three-, two- and one-crown portfolios.
The ratings are based on an independent, purely quantitative and backwards-looking assessment of how a fund has navigated the market – focused on alpha, volatility and consistency – over the past three years.
Below, Trustnet reveals which providers have the biggest proportion of their MPS line-up holding the top rating of five crowns.
Performance of HRIS Blended Medium Risk Growth vs UK MPS 45%-65% Growth sector over 3yrs to end-August 2026
Source: FinXL. Return in sterling between 1 Sep 2023 and 31 Aug 2026
Hymans Robertson sits at the top of the table: six of its 14 model portfolios hold an FE fundinfo Crown Rating and five of these (or 83.3%) have been awarded five crowns. The three-year total return of its HRIS Blended Medium Risk Growth portfolio against its average peer can be seen in the chart above.
HRIS Blended Equity Focus Growth, HRIS Blended Medium to High Risk Growth, HRIS Blended Medium Risk Growth, HRIS Blended Low to Medium Risk Growth and HRIS Blended Low Risk Growth are the top-rated portfolios. HRIS Blended Higher Risk Growth has three crowns.
The firm has two MPS offerings: Blended and Markets. Hymans Robertson's Blended models – which all its rated portfolios are examples of – invest in passive, factor and active managers, holding between 25 and 35 underlying funds. The Market range only uses passive and factor-based investments in order to reduce costs.
Hymans Robertson's MPS team uses the long-term, evidence-based approach that the independent partnership has used with institutional clients for decades, saying it builds high-conviction and low-turnover portfolios that are intentionally different to market indices.
The models hold notably less in North American equities than the broader market (49% versus a market-weighted 65%), reflecting concerns over high valuations and stock concentration, though the region still represents its largest geographic allocation given its role as the primary source of global earnings growth.
As part of its strategy review earlier in the year, the HRIS model portfolios increased their multi-factor exposure to around 25% of equities, up from roughly 21% the previous year, continuing a steady rise from 13% in 2023 as it looks to reduce reliance on a small number of stocks.
The 10 MPS providers with the largest proportion of their rated models holding the top award of five crowns can be seen in the table below.
Source: FinXL
Drumnor Investments comes in second place as all five of the firm's models are rated under FE fundinfo's Crown methodology and four (80%) won the top five crowns in the latest rebalance. Drumnor Adventurous, Drumnor Progressive, Drumnor Moderate and Drumnor Steady have five crowns, while Drumnor Cautious has four.
The firm holds around 15 funds in each model, blending passive and active strategies to reduce costs while aiming for differentiation and potential outperformance from broader market indices. Drumnor Steady, for example, has trackers such as iShares UK Equity Index and Vanguard US Equity Index sitting alongside active funds like Downing Active Defined Return Assets and FP Foresight UK Infrastructure Income in its top 10 holdings.
When Trustnet looked at the MPS providers that made the highest returns in 2025, Drumnor was one of the best performers, taking places in three of FE fundinfo's six MPS peer groups.
Saltus is in third place, as five of its 10 rated models (from a total of 15) hold an FE fundinfo Crown Rating of five. These are the group's Global Market Adventurous, Global Market Growth, Global Market Balanced, Global Market Moderately Cautious and Managed Cautious models.
Saltus' Market range is built from passive and factor-based funds, while its Managed range uses both active and passive funds.
In the firm's latest asset allocation committee meeting, the managers left the models' equity risk unchanged but adjusted its composition: adding US small-caps (funded from US large-caps) on more attractive valuations and consumer resilience while rotating from quality into a broad defensive allocation across staples, utilities and healthcare.
Elsewhere, the portfolios exited gold mining equities entirely following an earlier halving of the position and kept fixed income unchanged, favouring alternatives over longer-dated government bonds as its defensive ballast given inflation risk.