How do Swedish asset managers increase their chances of winning mandates from international institutional investors without altering their investment process, their philosophy, or their edge? The answer, for a growing number of firms across Europe and beyond, could simply be lying in how they report their performance.

Institutional allocators like pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and insurance companies, as well as the consultants who advise them, operate increasingly standardised manager selection processes. Requests for proposals (RFPs) are built around structured questionnaires, and the criteria applied are often binary: a firm either meets a baseline requirement, or it does not advance to the next stage. One requirement that has migrated, over the past two decades, from differentiating credential to baseline expectation is compliance with the Global Investment Performance Standards, known as GIPS.

This shift matters for Sweden. Its investment management industry is active, internationally oriented, and home to managers whose track records and investment capabilities are fully competitive on the world stage. Yet as of today, only one Swedish firm (East Capital) formally claims GIPS compliance. Denmark counts 12 compliant firms; Finland, 8; Norway, 4. Switzerland has 24; the United Kingdom, 80. The United States alone has over 1,200 . By any measure, Sweden is underrepresented in a framework that is fast becoming the global standard for credible performance reporting.
This article explains what the GIPS standards are, why asset managers across the world choose to claim compliance, and what the gap between Sweden and comparable markets represents, both as a challenge and, more importantly, as an opportunity.
What Are the GIPS Standards?

The Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS) are a set of voluntary, ethical principles developed and administered by CFA Institute that govern how investment management firms calculate and present their investment performance to prospective clients and investors. First introduced in 1999, and most recently updated in 2020, the GIPS standards are now adopted by organisations in 54 markets worldwide, with more than 1,600 firms and asset owners formally claiming compliance1.

The foundational logic of GIPS is straightforward. Before the standards existed, the investment management industry suffered from a fundamental comparability problem. Without standardised rules governing return calculations, composite construction, and the selection of which accounts to include in a track record, asset managers were effectively free to present performance in whatever light was most flattering. Marketing departments could cherry-pick high-performing accounts, select convenient time periods, obscure important caveats, and use inconsistent valuation methodologies, all resulting in a market in which, as one observer memorably put it, every manager appeared to be an above-average performer.

The GIPS standards were designed to resolve this problem by establishing a consistent, verifiable, and internationally recognised framework. At their core, the standards require firms to: define themselves and their business boundaries clearly and consistently; group all fee-paying, discretionary portfolios into composites according to investment strategy; calculate time-weighted returns (or money-weighted returns where appropriate under the 2020 edition) using fair value inputs and standardised treatment of external cash flows; present a minimum of five years of performance history building to ten; and make available a complete list of composites and pooled funds to any prospective investor upon request.
The 2020 edition of the standards, which became effective from the period ending 31 December 2020, was a significant expansion of scope. It introduced separate dedicated chapters for firms, asset owners, and verifiers; broadened the framework to cover pooled funds with distinct reporting requirements; reinstated the use of carve-outs with allocated cash for sub-strategy presentation; allowed money-weighted returns for asset classes such as private equity and infrastructure where time-weighted returns are less meaningful; and introduced updated guidance on valuation hierarchies and the treatment of illiquid assets. The result is a framework that is now genuinely applicable across the full spectrum of asset classes and vehicle types, from traditional long-only equity mandates to private credit, infrastructure, and multi-asset strategies.

Most importantly, GIPS compliance is a claim that applies at the firm level, not the strategy level. A firm either complies for all its assets and strategies within the defined firm perimeter or it does not.

Why Firms Choose to Claim Compliance

The decision to claim GIPS compliance is voluntary, and the commercial and operational incentives to do so are increasingly compelling.

Access

The most immediate driver is access to institutional capital. Institutional investors have progressively embedded GIPS compliance into their external manager selection criteria. It has evolved from a differentiating credential into what practitioners in the field routinely describe as a hygiene factor. Research conducted by CFA Institute confirms that 68% of asset owners surveyed either require or explicitly ask about GIPS compliance when selecting managers for liquid asset strategies . In the context of RFPs, firms that cannot demonstrate compliance are increasingly filtered out before substantive evaluation even begins.

Credibility

The second driver is credibility. The GIPS compliance claim signals to the market that a firm’s performance track record has been constructed under controlled, auditable conditions. It is a statement that the numbers presented are free from selective account inclusion, convenient periodisation, or internally inconsistent methodology. For a prospective investor conducting due diligence on a manager they have not previously allocated to, this signal substantially reduces informational asymmetry. As the standards’ own governance documentation frames it, GIPS compliance promotes fair, global competition among investment firms precisely because it levels the information environment between managers and those evaluating them.

Discipline

The third and often underappreciated driver is the internal discipline that the compliance process imposes. Achieving GIPS compliance requires firms to develop and document robust written policies and procedures covering every dimension of performance measurement: how accounts are assigned to composites, how returns are calculated, how new accounts are added and terminated accounts removed, how significant cash flows are treated, and how valuations are determined for illiquid holdings. For many firms, undertaking this process reveals inconsistencies or gaps in existing practices that, once resolved, improve the quality of data available for internal portfolio analysis and risk management, not just external reporting.

Economics

The fourth driver is the favourable economics of getting started. A common misconception is that GIPS compliance necessarily entails the cost of independent verification, and that this places the standard out of reach for all but the largest firms. In practice, verification is recommended but not required. While approximately 85% of GIPS-compliant firms globally have chosen to be independently verified , this figure is heavily skewed by jurisdictions such as the United States, where institutional investors typically treat verification as a de facto requirement. Claiming compliance, however, is a separate and considerably more accessible step. It requires internal focus rather than external expenditure: documenting policies and procedures, defining composites, and ensuring consistent application of the standards across the firm. For managers whose performance measurement processes are already well organised, much of this work amounts to formalising what is already being done, making the initial claim of compliance a genuine low-hanging fruit. Verification, if and when it becomes commercially warranted, can be added as a subsequent step, allowing firms to scale their investment in the standards in line with the institutional opportunities they are pursuing.

The Global Landscape: Where Adoption Stands and Where It Is Heading

In the United States, GIPS compliance has long been standard practice at the institutional level. All 25 of the largest global asset managers claim compliance, and 85 of the top 100 do so for all or part of their business. In the United Kingdom, 80 firms claim compliance, a market where the standard is actively promoted by the UK Investment Performance Committee, co-sponsored by the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association and the Investment Association. In Switzerland, the 24 compliant firms operate within an ecosystem actively supported by the Asset Management Association Switzerland (AMAS), which maintains a dedicated GIPS Expert Group, organises an annual GIPS Day, and coordinates the positions of Swiss practitioners on developments in the standards. The Swiss model illustrates how a structured national advocacy infrastructure can meaningfully accelerate domestic adoption.

Across the Nordic region, the picture is more varied. Denmark and Finland have materially higher uptake than Sweden relative to the size of their respective fund industries, and Norway’s compliance community, while smaller, is growing. Outside the Nordic context, markets as diverse as Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Brazil have developed active GIPS communities. The most recent CFA Institute data indicates that GIPS-compliant organisations collectively span 54 markets, with growing representation across the EMEA and Asia-Pacific regions.

A particularly notable development in the 2024 CFA Institute Asset Owner Survey is the acceleration of compliance claims among institutional investors themselves, not only among the asset managers they hire. Some 31% of asset owners surveyed reported claiming GIPS compliance, up from under 21% in 2020. Another 9% indicated they intend to do so. This expansion of GIPS into the asset owner community represents a structural deepening of the standard’s role in the global investment ecosystem. It also changes the dynamic for asset managers: a GIPS-compliant asset owner that evaluates its own performance to a disciplined standard will, almost by definition, apply an equally rigorous standard to the managers it selects.

More than 90% of asset owners surveyed report exposure to illiquid assets, with nearly half allocating between 26% and 50% of their portfolios to such holdings. This is directly relevant to the evolution of GIPS: the 2020 update was specifically designed to accommodate the complexity of illiquid strategies, and the growing guidance around alternative investment vehicles, OCIO portfolios, and private credit reflects the direction of travel in both asset owner allocation and regulatory scrutiny.

The Case for Sweden

A large part of Sweden’s investment management industry is or intends to become internationally engaged, and is increasingly subject to the same institutional screening processes that have driven GIPS adoption in other markets. Swedish fund managers compete for mandates from global institutional investors. Swedish pension capital is allocated to international asset managers who, in most cases, already claim GIPS compliance. And Swedish institutional investors such as the AP funds, large pension funds, insurance companies, or even smaller foundations are sophisticated enough to understand exactly what GIPS compliance does and does not represent.

The argument for broader GIPS adoption in Sweden is not primarily normative. It is commercial and strategic. A Swedish asset manager competing for allocation from a large European or North American pension fund is, in the absence of GIPS compliance, operating at a structural disadvantage relative to peers from markets where compliance is common. The manager is asking a sophisticated institutional investor to accept a non-standard performance presentation when standardised alternatives are widely available. In a competitive landscape where performance track records are often the primary basis for selection, this is a meaningful friction.

Conversely, a Swedish firm that achieves GIPS compliance, especially if it undergoes independent verification, can present its track record on terms that institutional investors recognise, and in many cases require. It removes a potential exclusion criterion at the RFP stage. It signals alignment with the governance and transparency expectations of the most sophisticated allocators in the global market.

There is also a reputational dimension at the level of the Swedish asset management industry as a whole. Sweden’s financial sector has consistently positioned itself as a model of governance, long-termism, and investor protection. Broader GIPS adoption would reinforce that positioning in the global institutional marketplace with a tangible, verifiable credential, one that is recognised and respected by investors in every major market.

A Practical Next Step

Achieving GIPS compliance is a structured process, but it is one that many firms find less burdensome in practice than they initially anticipate. For firms already maintaining rigorous performance measurement and reporting processes, as most professionally managed firms do, a significant portion of the infrastructure required for compliance is already in place. The incremental effort typically involves formalising and documenting existing practices, establishing composite structures, and engaging an independent verifier, if desired. It is important to note, however, that claiming compliance does not require external verification, as this significantly lowers the threshold from a cost perspective.

CFA Society Sweden is committed to supporting the Swedish investment management community in understanding and pursuing GIPS compliance. We intend to raise awareness, clarify common misconceptions, gather questions from practitioners, and explore what kind of further guidance or discussion would be useful for the Swedish market. Whether you are a firm at the beginning of the process, evaluating whether compliance is appropriate for your business, or seeking to understand the implications of the 2020 standards for your specific asset classes and vehicle structures, we welcome the conversation.