Prominent newspaper articles appeared in both the Sunday Telegraph and the Sunday Herald Sun on November 28th and both quoted data from a "confidential" industry report prepared by SuperRatings. Please note that there is no "confidential" report and that the data quoted was not provided to the media outlets by SuperRatings. It has since been established that the data used (and in some cases shown as "sourced") by the media outlets was extracted from our monthly Fund Crediting Rate Survey ("FCRS") which clearly was provided to them by an unauthorised party. This is disappointing for several reasons and we would like to clarify our position as follows:
- SuperRatings did not provide the information to the media outlets involved and therefore their reference to us as a source was incorrect.
- All FCRS clients of SuperRatings are subject to a written agreement which prohibits the provision of our data to a third party. We remind subscribers that the provision of our data to a third party is in breach of our agreement and a possible breach of copyright laws in Australia.
- SuperRatings has been meticulous in ensuring that short term results at fund level are never provided to the media. We always refer to medians and quartiles in this instance. We have not changed our approach to this issue since the inception of our industry survey in April 2003 and it was disappointing to see that short term results were published at fund level due to the illegal distribution of our survey.
- Whilst collecting over 4,000 performance results per month and reporting on everything from one month to ten year results on a monthly basis, SuperRatings always endeavours to ensure that a balanced view of both short and long term performance is provided. We also endeavour to promote the better performing funds rather than highlight those whose performance may have suffered relative to our indices.
The publishing of our data in the way it occurred was outside our control. Our survey is taken and used by the great majority of the industry and this would appear to be the first obvious breach of our agreements. We trust that clients understand the importance of not distributing our reports to external parties and hope that this can be reinforced to your staff on a regular basis.
SuperRatings will continue to work closely with the media to ensure that any data sourced from us is used and communicated to their readers/viewers/listeners in a professional manner and with the right messages. We understand the importance of balanced reporting and respectfully request your assistance in this matter by adhering to our agreements and Australian copyrights laws.
Please feel free to contact me with any queries you may have on the above.
Yours sincerely
Jeff Bresnahan
Managing Director