Recently, China’s mutual fund industry marked the first anniversary of its high-quality development reforms. Over the past year, the industry has accelerated its transformation in areas including investment capability building, upgrades to investment and research systems, and improvements in investor returns, with both the quality and efficiency of development continuing to strengthen.

Against this backdrop, five-star ratings awarded by authoritative third-party institutions have become an important benchmark for assessing the true investment and research capabilities of mutual fund managers. A small number of leading institutions, including GF Fund Management, have received five-star or AAAAA ratings across different product categories, investment horizons and markets, demonstrating broad and diversified investment capabilities.

Fund Rating Landscape Reshuffled, with Only a Few Institutions Consistently Maintaining Five-Star Ratings

The latest ratings from seven major authoritative fund rating institutions—Morningstar, Guotai Haitong Securities, China Galaxy Securities, China Merchants Securities, TX Investment Consulting, Shanghai Securities and Jian Financial Information—have now all been released.

The results show that within China’s RMB37 trillion mutual fund market, the five-star rating landscape has undergone a significant reshuffling, and institutions capable of consistently maintaining top-tier investment management capabilities across different asset classes remain scarce.

Under the high-quality development assessment framework, fund ratings are generally based on peer comparisons within individual product categories. Leading fund managers typically manage a larger number of products across a broader range of categories, making their overall ratings more susceptible to the performance of individual products. As a result, maintaining consistently high five-star ratings can be significantly more challenging for large institutions than for smaller managers. This shift also reflects the industry’s broader transition from a “scale-driven” model toward a “capability-driven” model.

Against this backdrop, a small number of leading institutions have continued to secure the highest five-star or AAAAA ratings across different product categories and investment horizons, demonstrating more diversified, balanced and sustainable long-term investment management capabilities. They have emerged as representative examples of capability-driven mutual fund managers in the era of high-quality development.

GF Fund Management is one such example. A total of 111 funds under the Company—counting only the primary share class where multiple share classes exist—received five-star or AAAAA ratings. These products span a broad range of categories, including active equity, fixed income, passive index strategies and overseas investments.

At the company level, GF Fund Management also received a number of top ratings, including a three-year AAAAA rating from TX Investment Consulting for active bond investment capabilities, a three-year five-star rating from Jian Financial Information for index fund management, a five-year five-star rating for pure bond fund management, and a five-year five-star rating for QDII fund management. Its comprehensive multi-asset, multi-market and multi-strategy asset management capabilities have been widely recognized by authoritative institutions, placing the Company firmly among the industry’s leading players.

111 GF Fund Management Funds Receive Five-Star Ratings, Demonstrating Diversified Investment Capabilities Through Medium- and Long-Term Performance

Active equity investing is often regarded as a key test of a mutual fund manager’s core investment and research capabilities, and the standards for five-star ratings in equity strategies have become increasingly stringent.

Taking Jian Financial Information’s evaluation framework as an example, the methodology assesses not only profitability, downside risk resilience, stock selection capability and market timing ability, but also the degree of deviation from the fund’s performance benchmark.

In the first quarter of this year, GF Fund Management had representative products across a range of active equity approaches—including broad-market stock selection, sector and thematic investing, and differentiated strategies—receive five-star ratings. GF Advanced Manufacturing Equity Fund A, GF Electronic Information & Media Equity Fund A, GF Multi-Factor Hybrid Fund, GF Ruiyu One-Year Holding Period Hybrid Fund A and GF Value Leadership One-Year Holding Period Hybrid Fund A were among the products awarded five-star or AAAAA ratings by all seven rating institutions. Meanwhile, GF Manufacturing Select Fund A, a “double-ten” fund, received a ten-year five-star rating from Guotai Haitong Securities.

In fixed income, rating institutions have raised their requirements for credit risk pricing, duration management and drawdown control. GF Fund Management’s five-star-rated fixed-income products span a wide range of subcategories, including money market funds, short-duration bond funds, actively managed pure bond funds, bond index funds, primary bond funds, secondary bond funds, bond-oriented hybrid funds and flexible allocation funds, providing investors with a diversified range of five-star-rated options.

Among them, GF Jingning Pure Bond Fund A and GF Jifu Pure Bond Fund A received five-star or AAAAA ratings from seven and six rating institutions respectively. GF Pure Bond Fund A and GF Dual Bond Enhanced Income Fund A each received five-star ratings over three-, five- and ten-year horizons, highlighting their role as potential long-term portfolio stabilizers.

At the company level, GF Fund Management also received a three-year AAAAA rating from TX Investment Consulting for active bond investment capabilities and a five-year five-star rating from Jian Financial Information for pure bond fund management.

In passive index investing, authoritative rating institutions focus more closely on how effectively funds perform as investment tools, primarily assessing performance relative to benchmarks, while some institutions also take overall fee levels into account.

In addition to receiving a three-year five-star company-level rating from Jian Financial Information for index fund management, GF Fund Management had as many as 45 index products receive five-star ratings. These products span major broad-market indices as well as multiple industry and thematic exposures, reflecting strong index-tracking capabilities and broader advantages in areas such as fees and liquidity. They can therefore help both on-exchange and off-exchange investors access investment opportunities more efficiently and at lower cost.

Among broad-based index products, CSI 300 ETF GF, CSI 500 ETF GF, CSI 1000 ETF GF, STAR 50 ETF GF and ChiNext ETF GF all received five-star ratings. These ETFs combine scale and liquidity advantages and provide investors with efficient tools for gaining long-term exposure to core Chinese assets.

In sector and thematic investing, GF Fund Management’s forward-looking product development and refined management approach have also delivered strong results. Its Power ETF GF, Innovative Drug ETF GF, Information Technology ETF GF and Rare Metals ETF GF, together with their feeder funds, all received five-star ratings.

In index enhancement strategies, GF CSI 300 Enhanced Index Fund A and Dual Innovation 50 Enhanced ETF GF also received five-star ratings.

In overseas investing, rating institutions primarily assess profitability, downside risk resilience and performance stability. GF Fund Management received a five-year five-star rating from Jian Financial Information for QDII fund management, while its five-star-rated overseas products cover both active and passive strategies as well as both exchange-traded and off-exchange formats.

Among them, Nasdaq ETF GF and its feeder fund received a three-year five-star rating from Jian Financial Information. The actively managed GF Global Select Equity Fund (QDII) A received three-year five-star ratings from both Morningstar and Jian Financial Information, as well as a ten-year five-star rating from Morningstar.

Fund ratings are not an end in themselves, but rather a reference point for capability building across the industry, encouraging fund managers to continuously strengthen product quality.

According to industry professionals, GF Fund Management has in recent years focused on achieving product leadership and continuously enhancing the core competitiveness of its investment product offering.

First, the Company has continued to upgrade its investment and research system to strengthen its ability to capture investment opportunities. Through a “large platform, small teams” investment and research model, it promotes the continuous evolution of investment capabilities and has developed an increasingly comprehensive spectrum of investment styles, providing investors with a broad range of solutions for allocation across market cycles.

Second, the Company has strengthened research-driven product development to enhance product competitiveness at the source. Based on its assessment of industry trends, it actively identifies investment opportunities arising from new quality productive forces. At the same time, it has been an early mover in building “discretionary + quantitative” investment capabilities and translating them into investable products.

Third, GF Fund Management has strengthened full-lifecycle product quality control to continuously enhance the vitality of existing products. By anchoring portfolio management to performance benchmarks, it reinforces investment process management, investment discipline and risk controls.

Fourth, the Company continues to expand its pool of high-quality investment talent and strengthen the foundations of long-term value creation. By improving systematic talent identification and selection mechanisms and developing a professional talent training and development framework, GF Fund Management has reinforced its talent pipeline and succession structure. This provides strong support for identifying structural investment opportunities across different asset classes and improving product performance.