A mutual fund subadvisor's team is celebrating a big anniversary this spring.

Robert D. "Rob" Arnott Research Affiliates, LLC Partner, Founding Chairman

Last month, Research Affiliates reached its 20th anniversary as a company. The company launched back in March 2002 and has since grown to 79 employees (as of March 31, 2022), including 74 in the U.S. RA now has 60 institutional partners (including asset owners, implementers, and third-party distributors), a spokesperson for RA confirms, and products (such as ETFs, SMAs, and traditional MFs) using RA's strategies totaled about $169 billion in assets (as of December 31, 2021). (Invesco, Pimco, and Schwab are some of the partners for whom RA subadvises funds.)

RA's three main types of strategies are smart beta, asset allocation, and active equity, and they have a sister company, RAFI Indices, that builds, publishes, and licenses indexes based on RA's research.

Rob Arnott, partner and founding chairman of RA, reveals in a celebratory video message that the RA team has published more than 425 articles in those 20 years.

"We aspire to be the dominant source of transformation innovation in the asset management arena," Arnott says. "We're singularly focused on research and product innovation, not distribution ... We don't need to have a trading desk, a back office, client reporting."

Looking ahead, Arnott adds that "innovation will to continue to be central" for RA. He says

"Replicating others' ideas is an assured path to average returns," Arnott says. "At Research Affiliates, we cheerfully accept the risks that are inevitable for any truly disruptive idea or innovative enterprise."

"We'll continue ask ourselves a few questions to guide our innovation," Arnott adds:

Where is conventional wisdom ignoring the lessons of history? Where do widely held beliefs lead investors astray? Where is best practice missing the mark? Can we create better solutions to serve our customers?

 

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