How to Update your GIPS Policies & Procedures for GIPS 2020

May 20, 2020
15 min
How to Update your GIPS Policies & Procedures for GIPS 2020

If you are an investment firm or asset owner that complies with the GIPS standards you are required to make some modifications to yourGIPS policies and procedures (“P&P”) to address changes made to the 2020edition of the Standards. The extent of these updates depends on:

  1. whether your organization plans to adopt any new optional policies,
  2. whether you have pooled funds to add to the current list of composites, or
  3. if your organization plans to change any calculation methodologies now allowed under the new standards.

Like other GIPS requirements, consistent application and adequate documentation are critical to ensuring these updates and changes are applied correctly and consistently.

GIPS 2020: Minimum Requirements for all GIPSCompliant Organizations

There are some required GIPS policies & procedure updates that will impact all organizations claiming compliance. At a minimum, all firms and asset owners must address the following in their P&P:

Terminology

What was previously called “Compliant Presentations” are now called “GIPS Reports” in the 2020 GIPS standards. Likely, the term “CompliantPresentations” is used throughout your P&P, which needs to be replaced with“GIPS Reports” to be in sync with the language of the updated standards.

Demonstrate that GIPS Reports are Distributed

It has always been a good idea to maintain a log documenting the distribution of GIPS Reports to help support that your firm met the requirement of providing them to prospective clients; however, it was not previously required. The 2020 edition of the GIPS standards now requires firms to demonstrate how it made every reasonable effort to provide a GIPS Report to prospective clients that are required to receive one.

The most common way to do this is by maintaining a log of the distribution in a spreadsheet or by noting the distribution in your firm’s CRM system. If noting distribution in your CRM, it is important to populate this in a way that can easily be extracted into a report. Your GIPS verifier is now required to test this so you will need to be able to produce a report demonstrating that your firm is distributing GIPS Reports to prospective clients.

In addition, you must now update your P&P to document the process for how this is maintained. Although each firm will need to document this differently to accurately describe their process (i.e., the system in which it is maintained and who is responsible for maintaining it), below is an example of how this may be documented:

Each time a GIPS Report is distributed, the firm’s SalesAssociate is responsible for logging the distribution on the firm’s CRM system.This documentation will include who received the GIPS Report, the version of the GIPS Report they received, the method of delivery, and the date it was delivered. This information may be extracted from the CRM system by the SalesAssociate if requested by a verifier, regulator, or if needed internally.

Error Correction Procedures

In the 2010 edition of the GIPS standards, if a material error was discovered in a compliant presentation, correction and redistribution was required with a disclosure of the change to “all prospective clients and other parties that received the erroneous compliant presentation.” In addition to these, the 2020 GIPS standards specifically call out providing corrected GIPSReports to your current GIPS verifier as well as any former verifier or current client that received the GIPS Report containing the material error.

Currently, most firms’ policies relating to material errors are likely limited to the action they take to redistribute to current prospective clients. We recommend updating this language to specifically address the need to provide the corrected presentation to verifiers and clients who received the erroneous presentation as well. An example of how this may be documented is provided below:

Our firm will determine an identified error is material if the error exceeds the materiality thresholds stated in the Error Correction Policy: Materiality Grid. If this occurs, we will correct all affected GIPS Reports, include a disclosure of the change, and make every reasonable effort to provide a corrected GIPS Report to:

  • Prospective clients that received the GIPS Report t hat had the material error;
    • Clients and any former verifiers that received theGIPS Report that had the material error; and
    • Current GIPS verifier.

Verifier Independence

Verifiers are prohibited from testing their own work and, therefore, cannot help their clients by writing policies, calculating performance, creating GIPS Reports, etc. To help ensure this independence is maintained, firms that are verified are now required to gain an understanding of their verifier’s policies for maintaining independence and to consider their verifier’s assessment of independence to ensure there are no conflicts.

To comply with this, firms must request that their verifier provide documentation describing the measures they take during the verification process to ensure independence is maintained. The procedures for requesting and assessing this needs to be described in the firm’s GIPS policies &procedures. Below is an example of what this might look like:

Our firm has engaged XYZ Verification Firm as an independent third-party verification firm to verify our claim of compliance. Each year, prior to the start of the annual verification, we request the independence policy statement from the verification firm.  If there are no changes from the prior year, this confirmation is requested in writing. Any potential threats to independence, either in fact or in appearance, are discussed with the verifier to resolve immediately.

GIPS Report Updates

We will discuss all the changes relating to GIPS Reports in a separate blog; however, some of those changes will require updates to your firm’s GIPS policies and procedures, which we do want to discuss here.Presenting annual internal dispersion and three-year annualized ex post standard deviation is not new; however, it is new that firms are required to disclose whether gross-of-fee or net-of-fee returns are used in these calculations. We recommend adding language to your P&P that makes it clear whether you will use gross-of-fee or net-of-fee returns. Including this in yourP&P will help you ensure the calculation is consistent with the disclosure you will be adding to your GIPS Reports. An example of how this could be worded is as follows:

Composite internal dispersion is measured using the asset-weighted standard deviation of annual gross-of-fee returns of those portfolios included in the composite for the full year. The three-year annualized ex post standard deviation measures the variability of the composite gross-of-fee returns and benchmark returns over the preceding 36-month period.

While either gross-of-fee or net-of-fee returns are acceptable, at Longs Peak we generally recommend that our clients use gross-of-fee returns so the presented volatility relates specifically to the implementation of the strategy and is not affected by management fees (which may differ by account, be paid at different times, etc).

Additionally, there is a new requirement to update GIPSReports with the prior year’s information within 12 months of the period ending. In other words, statistics for the period ending December 31, 2020 must be added to your GIPS Reports by December 31, 2021.That will be plenty of time for most firms, but to ensure this is done, we recommend adding a procedure to your P&P document simply explaining that the reports must be updated within12 months after the end of each annual period.

GIPS 2020: Changes for Firms with Pooled Funds

Firms that have pooled funds will have a few additional changes to make to their GIPS policies & procedures.

Terminology

Most firms will have language in their P&P referring to “prospective clients.” In the 2020 GIPS standards, the term prospective client refers specifically to a prospective separate account investor while the term “prospective investor” is used when referring to a prospective pooled fund investor. Firms need to review their P&P language and make updates to define both terms and ensure they are using the appropriate term depending on the context of what is being described.

List of Pooled Funds

Firms have always been required to maintain a list of composite descriptions, but now the same is needed for each pooled fund the firm manages. For each limited distribution pooled fund, a description needs to be included (similar to what was done historically for composites). Broad distribution pooled funds need to be listed, but no description is required.

If you are unsure whether a pooled fund is considered broad distribution or limited, broad distribution pooled funds are defined in the glossary of the 2020 GIPS standards as “A pooled fund that is regulated under a framework that would permit the general public to purchase or hold the pooled fund’s shares and is not exclusively offered in one-on-one presentations.Limited distribution pooled funds are simply defined as any pooled fund that does not meet the definition of a broad distribution pooled fund.

Pooled Fund Inception Date

Pooled fund performance must be reported back to the pooled fund’s inception date. How the inception date was determined must be documented in the firm’s GIPS policies & procedures. Inception date could be based on when investment management fees are first charged, when the first investment-related cash flow takes place, when the first capital call is made, or when committed capital is closed and legally binding. Whatever criteria is used to determine the inception date must be clearly described in the P&P to ensure an appropriate inception date is used for each pooled fund managed by the firm.

Error Correction Thresholds

If language used to document error correction materiality thresholds is specific to composites, this will need to be modified to incorporate thresholds for statistics reported in GIPS Pooled Fund Reports as well. If the same thresholds are appropriate for both composites and pooled funds (e.g. composite and pooled fund performance can have the same threshold and composite and pooled fund assets can have the same threshold) then this maybe as simple as changing “Composite” to “Composite/Pooled Fund” throughout this section.

Additionally, if your firm is now presenting money-weighted returns and other related multiples for closed-end funds, you will need to add thresholds to your policy for these statistics as well.

Changes for other Optional Policies

The 2020 GIPS standards offer some more flexibility to ensure theyare as meaningful and useful as possible to all types of investment firms and asset owners. If any of these policies are utilized, additional changes will berequired to describe their use in your firm’s GIPS policies & procedures.Examples of these optional policies include, but are not limited to:

Carve-Outs

If a firm decides to utilize carve-outs with allocated cash, the new carve-out composite will need to be documented in the current list of composites. In addition, the firm will need to implement policies and procedures as to how they allocate cash, how they identify appropriate asset buckets to carve-out from existing accounts, which accounts have asset groups that need to be carved-out to meet the new composite definition, and document other composite related policies applied to the carve-out composite.

Portability

Historically, GIPS compliant firms meeting the portability requirements were required to link the historical performance record to the ongoing performance. The 2020 GIPS standards change this to make linking optional. When portable track records exist, firms need to document in theirP&P 1) whether the historical track record meets the GIPS portability requirements and 2) whether they are electing to link the historical performance record or choosing to not link it.

Estimated Transaction Costs

The GIPS standards define “gross-of-fees” as the return on investments reduced by transaction costs. Historically, firms complying with the GIPS standards were prohibited from estimating transaction costs; the use of actual transaction costs was required. The 2020 GIPS standards now allow estimated transaction costs to be used in cases where actual transaction costs are not known.

Using actual transaction costs is straightforward for traditional portfolios that pay transaction costs in the form of commissions oneach trade. The issue most commonly arises with wrap accounts that pay transaction costs as part of a bundled fee.

Historically, firms were not able to present returns gross-of-fees for their composites containing wrap accounts because they wereunable to determine the actual transaction costs. Most firms instead present“pure gross” returns, which are gross of the entire wrap fee and are requiredto be labelled as supplemental information.

Allowing estimated transaction costs will give firms managing wrap accounts the option to estimate the portion of the wrap fee that is for transaction costs and reduce returns by this estimated figure.

If estimated transaction costs are utilized, the firm must disclose in their GIPS Reports how these estimated transaction costs aredetermined. Similarly, the process used to determine the estimated transaction costs and the methodology utilized to reduce the returns by the estimated transaction costs needs to be documented in the firm’s P&P.

Model Management Fees

Previously, GIPS compliant firms using model investment management fees (rather than actual fees) to determine net-of-fee results were required to use the highest investment management fee. This was generally interpreted as the highest fee from the composite’s fee schedule or the highest fee-paying portfolio in the composite, whichever was higher. In the 2020 GIPS standards, firms using model management fees are required to use a fee that is“appropriate” to the prospective client. While the model fee doesn’t specifically have to be the highest fee, the resulting returns still need to be equal to or lower than the results that would be calculated if actual management fees were used.

If your P&P already describes using the highest management fee and you will continue to use the highest fee then no change is needed. If you will implement a new process other than highest fee, then it is important to update your P&P to describe how the model fee will be determined and applied. This description needs to include how you will confirm that the net-of-fee returns using the model fee are not higher than they would be if the actual investment management fees were used.

Presenting Advisory-Only Assets

Firms that have Unified Managed Accounts (“UMA Accounts”) or other similar arrangements where they are simply providing a model to be implemented by another party generally are not able to include these accounts in their total firm assets. These accounts are considered “advisory-only” because the manager is only providing the model and has no responsibility to implement the strategy or monitor the portfolios on an ongoing basis.

This type of arrangement has become increasingly popular over the last decade. Given the popularity of these relationships, many firms now have a large amount of advisory-only assets that they would like to report.Because of this demand, the 2020 GIPS standards have provided guidance outlining the proper way for firms to present these assets separate from their total firm assets. Firms electing to present these assets must make it clear how they intend to report them in their GIPS Reports.

Historically, many firms documented in their P&P something like, “all accounts deemed to be advisory-only, hypothetical, or model in nature are excluded from total firm assets” to make it clear that they were not including anything in total firm assets that was prohibited. Firms now electing to separately present advisory-only assets must add an additional statement describing how they will be presented. For example, “Some of the firm’sstrategies are offered through UMA platforms on an advisory-only basis. Thes assets are presented separately from the firm’s composite assets and total firmassets and will be labelled ‘Advisory-Only Assets’.”

Presenting Money-Weighted Returns

Historically, time-weighted returns were required with two specific asset class exceptions: Private Equity and Real Estate (when RealEstate was managed in a Private Equity-like fund). The 2020 GIPS standards have now removed the asset-class specific requirements. Instead, firms may now present money-weighted returns for any asset class as long as the firm has control over the external cash flows and the composite or pooled fund has at least one of the following characteristics:

For firms meeting this criteria and electing to present money-weighted returns, the P&P must be updated to 1) note that the criteria was met, 2)indicate the election to present money-weighted returns, and 3) outline the methodology utilized to calculate the money-weighted return and other related multiples that must be presented in conjunction with the money-weighted return.

Other Considerations for GIPS Policies &Procedures

When going through your firm’s GIPS policies & procedures to make the required changes for the 2020 GIPS standards, this is a great opportunity to review the document as a whole to ensure everything is still relevant, applicable and accurate. One of the most common deficiencies regulators write in examinations is that policy and procedure documents do not reflect actual practices of the firm. We recommend a comprehensive review be conducted annually. Check out GIPS Compliance Actions for the New Year for a step-by-step guide to this review .

Questions?

If you have a situation that we didn’t cover here that is specific to your firm or for more information on GIPS Policies and Procedures, the changes to the GIPS standards for 2020, or GIPS compliance in general, reach out to us today (or contact Matt Deatherage at matt@longspeakadvisory.com or Sean Gilligan at sean@longspeakadvisory.com).

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If AI does much of the performance work that taught us,what will teach the next generation of performance experts?

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I recently sat in on a webinar with Hope Morrissey of BigPi on building AI tools inside a firm. It was practical and timely: at Longs Peak, we are building out our own workbench, and much of the conversation mapped onto choices we are making right now.

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But the question I asked at the end wasn't about tooling. It was about people.

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Most of us learned this profession by doing grunt work. We linked monthly returns by hand in Excel. We built and rebuilt composites line by line. We chased a 3 bp difference for an afternoon and found a fee posted to the wrong month. We made mistakes, and someone more experienced caught them and explained why.

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That work is going away, and maybe it should. AI and automation increasingly handle reconciliation, first-pass review and draft disclosures faster than any analyst. What's left, and what matters most, is judgment and expertise.

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Which raises the uncomfortable part: if the work that built today's experts disappears, how do we build tomorrow's?

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The grunt work was never really about the math

Looking back, the spreadsheets weren't the lesson. They were the delivery mechanism for three things that nobody taught us directly.

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  • A feel for what normal looks like. After linking monthly returns for a few months or running VLOOKUPs to map the right data to the right composite, you get to know what a normal month looks like and, perhaps more importantly, when one looks off.
  • A map of where things break. Every error made by hand taught us where errors live: the cash flow cutoff, the fee accrual, the stale price, or the account that should have left the composite two months ago.
  • Ownership of the number. When you built it yourself, you could defend it. You knew every assumption inside it.

That is the raw material of judgment. AI doesn't remove the need for it. It removes the accidental way we used to acquire it. So, the answer isn't to preserve busywork for its own sake. It's to identify what the grunt work was teaching and teach it on purpose.

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Judgment is the new edge

Shortly after the webinar, I came across a LinkedIn post built on comments NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang made on the podcast A Bit Personal. Huang pushed back on the usual definition of smart: "somebody who's intelligent, solves [technical] problems." His view: "I find that's a commodity." The people he values are technically astute but can also "infer the unspoken" and "see around corners."

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That lands hard in performance measurement. For two decades our credibility rested on getting the math right: time-weighted returns, composite construction, dispersion, three-year standard deviation. Systems already do most of that. AI is now taking the rest.

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What remains is the judgment call, the “unknowables.” Is this account still discretionary? Does this cash flow policy make sense for how the strategy is actually marketed? Is this benchmark still the right comparison after the strategy drifted (or the benchmark got too concentrated)?

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Those questions don't have a formula and often require interpretation rather than automation. They have experience behind them. And that brings us back to the training problem.

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Rebuilding the apprenticeship on purpose

Historically, nobody had to think very hard about how someone learned the job. You hired smart people, gave them the work, and the work did the teaching. Judgment showed up eventually, usually starting somewhere around the end of the first year.

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That approach falls apart once the work itself is automated. If we want people who can make good calls, we have to create the experiences that used to happen by accident. I don’t think we have this fully figured out, but these are the five things I keep coming back to.

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1. Do it by hand once, then let the machine do it

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I still think every new analyst should calculate both time-weighted and money-weighted returns by hand, link a quarter of monthly returns, and put together a small composite from scratch, at least once. Nobody is going to do it that way in production. The point is that it's very hard to supervise a process you've never done yourself. If you don't know where a cashflow belongs in the formula, you won't notice when something is in the wrong place.

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Once they've done it, have them run the same data through your automation tools and compare. Sometimes the results match. If they don't, working out why (a different day-weighting convention, a fee treated differently, a cash flow on the wrong date) teaches more about how th calculation really works than any training deck I've seen.

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2. Make the reviewer the new entry-level job

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For most performance teams, the junior job was to produce the number and someone more senior checked it. Now the machine increasingly produces the number, so the junior job becomes checking it. That's a harder place to start, because we're asking people to review work they may not have spent years doing themselves.

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One way to close that gap is to build exercises out of past results. Take AI-generated output and plant real errors (built from anonymized or synthetic examples) seen over the years: a mispriced security, a trade booked a day late, a fee posted to the wrong month, an account that should have left the composite and didn't. Ask newer team members to find them before a senior reviewer does. They may not catch everything at first, and that's fine. Talking through what they missed is where the pattern recognition starts to form, much the way it formed when those mistakes were made by doing the work by hand.

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3. Write down the instinct before you investigate

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Experienced performance professionals can usually tell something is off before they can explain why. Dispersion that jumps dramatically in a calm quarter. An account that is consistently a composite outlier. A composite return that beats every account in it, by a lot. That instinct is valuable, but it isn't always right. Sometimes it's just bias, and the number is actually fine.

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A simple habit helps. When something looks wrong, have the analyst write down what they think is going on before they start digging. Once they've found the answer, have them go back and note whether their first read held up. After a few months they should have a real record of where their instincts are reliable and where they aren't. When those notes are tracked and talked through as part of training, senior team members can see how someone reasons, not just whether they got the right answer.

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4. Teach people to hear what isn't in the file

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Much of our value sits in the gap between the data and what's happening at the firm. An account quietly drops out of a composite and nobody mentions why. Marketing starts promoting a new strategy before anyone has asked whether it needs its own composite. A portfolio manager mentions "a bit of a style tilt" in passing on a call. None of that is in the file, and AI can only work from the context we provide. If no one recognize what matters and brings it to the table, the tool will never know it was there.

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That kind of listening is not new, but it is hard to teach in a classroom. The best way I know is to bring junior team members into the rooms where it happens, early, even if they don't say a word. On an in-house performance team, that might be the monthly attribution review with the portfolio managers, the product committee when a new strategy is on the table, or the kickoff call with your verifier. On our side as consultants, it's client calls and verification kickoffs. In-house teams actually have an advantage here because they sit down the hall from PMs, operations and compliance, and an informal conversation is often where changes show up. Encourage juniors to participate in those conversations instead of working only from the data feed.

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Either way, debrief afterward. Ask what they heard that wasn't in the data, and what they would follow up on. The first few answers maybe thin, so share what you heard. Over time they'll pick up on things they used to overlook. That's probably one of the clearest signs that someone is developing real judgment.

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5. Turn your own history into the curriculum

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Our best training material is our own history of judgment calls. Build a library of real cases (anonymized of course): the facts, what was decided, why, and what you'd do differently now. Include the ones you got wrong.

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Run "what could go wrong" exercises together to pass judgment along. Before a verification, exam, or new factsheet goes out, get the team together and ask: "It's six months from now and this went badly. What happened?" Have everyone write their answers down before anyone shares. Newer staff hear what experienced people worry about and why: an undocumented policy change, hypothetical performance shown without the required policies, a net-of-fee calculation that doesn't tie to the fee schedule. That's knowledge that usually takes years to pick up by accident.

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What this asks of leaders

This isn't only a training problem. It's a leadership choice about where the time AI saves actually goes.

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  • Reinvest the hours. If automation saves a senior reviewer ten hours a month, some of those hours belong to teaching. Otherwise, efficiency quietly eats the pipeline of future experts.
  • Hire for judgment. Give candidates a messy composite file and ask what worries them, rather than screening on credentials alone.
  • Build tools that explain, not just answer. As we build our workbench at Longs Peak, one question I keep asking is whether our tools show its reasoning. A tool that explains why it flagged an account teaches. A tool that just flags it doesn't.
  • Measure what matters. Performance teams measure investment results for a living, yet rarely measure their own judgment. Whether you sit inside an investment firm or advise one, track the issues your team caught before the verifier, auditor, compliance or a regulator did, and who caught them. Over time, that tells you more about how your people are developing than how quickly the reports go out.

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The experts of the future won't learn the way we did

That's not a loss if we're deliberate about it. The firms that get this right will use AI to move people faster from producing numbers to questioning them, and they'll treat that shift as a training design problem, not a happy accident.

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I don't think anyone has fully solved this yet. We’re trying to be intentional about our future pipeline. I'd like to hear how other performance teams are approaching it. What are you doing to build judgment in people who may never link a return by hand?

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And as always, reach out if you want help rethinking how your team builds judgment in performance measurement at hello@longspeakadvisory.com.

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Sources

  • Jensen Huang quotes as reported by Upworthy (Feb 3, 2026), from his appearance on A Bit Personal with Jodi Shelton.

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Every so often we hear it: "Oh, you're one of the performance software tools."

It's an understandable assumption. We work in the same world as the software providers: composites, Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS®), performance data, and the systems that produce all of it. From the outside, it can look like we're all selling the same thing.

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We aren't. And if you're deciding how to support your performance and GIPS compliance work, the difference is worth understanding.

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The short version: Longs Peak is a team of people who do the work with you, or for you. We're not a platform you log into. Behind the scenes, our tools help our team deliver faster, more consistent service. But no number leaves our hands without a real performance expert standing behind it.

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Software Gives You a Capability. Someone Still Has to Run It.

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A software provider hands you a tool. A good one can be powerful, and those systems offer a ton of capabilities. But once the tool is installed, the work to run it lands on your desk.

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Someone on your team still has to load the data, set up and maintain the composites, review the results, chase down the account that looks off, and know the GIPS standards well enough to make the judgment calls. Software can calculate a return. It can't decide whether a new account belongs in a composite, explain why a number moved, or figure out what to do when a custodian changes its data feed.

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What We Actually Do

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At Longs Peak, we get our hands dirty, so you don't have to. In practice, that means:

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  • We manage your composites. Membership decisions, inclusion and exclusion, periodic updates, and the returns that come out the other end. We work alongside     members of your team to get those questions answered and make the updates for you. The work gets done by a person who does it every day.
  • We act as your GIPS expert. When a new strategy launches, a policy needs revisiting, or a gray area comes up, you have someone who knows the standards and has seen the situation before.
  • We dig into your data. We look for outliers, accounts that are breaking composite rules, and other anomalies, before they end up in your reported performance and get caught in verification. Not only do we help identify potential issues, but we work with your team to help create the paper trail to provide an explanation if questioned by a verifier.
  • We help with system issues. When your system isn't producing what you need, we get inside it and help work out why.
  • We design the output. Once the data work is done, we turn it into beautifully designed, client-ready factsheets and reporting. And we understand this information from a performance, compliance, and design perspective.
  • We help you communicate what matters most. For your prospects or a board of directors: which statistics support your story, and which just add noise? Those are communication choices, and we help you make them.

None of this is advice delivered from a distance. We maywork with you as a remote team, but we're not remotely hands-off. We work insideyour data, your systems, and your deadlines, the same way a colleague down thehall would. And when something needs fixing, we roll up our sleeves and fix it,so it’s off your plate and your to-do list.

Ways to Work With Us

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Every firm is set up differently, so we don't force a single model.

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  • Fully outsourced. We run composite management on your behalf, start to finish. For firms without a dedicated performance team, this is often the cleanest answer.
  • Part of your team. We work alongside your people, taking on the pieces that are heavy, specialized, or just hard to staff. To your colleagues, we're simply part of the performance team.
  • Your GIPS expert on call. Your team runs the day-to-day, and we're there for the questions, reviews, and judgment calls that need someone who has seen it all before.
  • Your marketing team. Your data is done and ready to be put to work. We turn it into polished factsheets and reporting for prospects, consultants, and boards, and help you decide which parts of your story deserve the spotlight.

Many clients start in one place and shift as their needs change. That flexibility allows us to grow alongside you and offer as much or little support as you need.

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Why This Matters

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Most firms don't struggle with GIPS compliance because they misunderstand a requirement. They struggle because the knowledge lives in one person's head, the team is stretched thin, or a system issue has been quietly sitting in the queue for months.

Software doesn't fix any of those problems. People do. Having an experienced team involved reduces key-person risk, frees your own staff for higher-value work, and means fewer surprises when verification or a regulatory review comes around.

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A Question Worth Asking

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If the person who runs your performance work were out for a month, who would pick it up? And if the honest answer is "we'd figure it out" or you simply don’t have an answer, it may be time to think about who else should be in the room.

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We're happy to talk through where you are today and what kind of support would actually help. No software demo required. Email us at hello@longspeakadvisory.com.

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GIPS® is a registered trademark owned by CFA Institute. CFA Institute does not endorse or promote this organization, nor does it warrant the accuracy or quality of the content contained herein.

If you manage money for institutional clients, you've probably heard some version of this sentence: "We can't consider your strategy unless you're GIPS compliant." For a lot of investment managers, that's the moment the Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS®) stop being an abstract industry term and start being a business requirement.

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This guide covers what GIPS compliance actually is, who needs it, what it takes to get there, and how to keep it running once you do. Wherever a topic deserves a deeper dive, we've linked to the longer article that covers it. Think of this as the map, with the detailed trail guides linked along the way.

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What Is GIPS Compliance?

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GIPS compliance means a firm calculates and presents its investment performance according to the GIPS which is a set of ethical, standardized rules for performance reporting created and administered by CFA Institute. At their core, the GIPS standards rest on two principles: fair representation and full disclosure.

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In practice, that means a GIPS compliant firm can't cherry-pick its best-performing accounts to show a prospect. It has to group similar portfolios into composites, present the full history honestly, disclose the assumptions behind the numbers, and apply the same rules consistently across the entire firm.

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GIPS compliance is voluntary. No regulator requires it. But it has become the closest thing the investment industry has to a common language for performance. This is often why so many institutional investors, consultants, and platforms require it before they'll even take a meeting.

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Who Needs to Be GIPS Compliant?

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Any investment manager who wants to compete for institutional business should take GIPS compliance seriously. That includes:

  • RIAs and asset managers pursuing institutional mandates (pensions, endowments, foundations, OCIOs)
  • Firms seeking placement on model delivery platforms, SMA platforms, or consultant databases
  • Managers responding to RFPs where GIPS compliance is a stated requirement
  • Firms that simply want a more defensible, standardized way to calculate and present performance — even without external pressure to do so

According to eVestment, roughly two out of three searches run by institutional investors and consultants in their database exclude firms that aren't GIPS compliant. If your strategy to scale your firm includes institutional or consultant-driven channels, GIPS compliance isn't optional in any practical sense, it's the price of admission.

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That said, don't mistake GIPS compliance for a purely institutional tool. Even firms with no institutional ambitions benefit from the discipline it offers: consistent calculation methodologies, documented policies, and a defensible and repeatable process for measuring performance. That rigor tends to pay off internally long before a prospect ever asks for it. And every additional firm that complies strengthens the credibility of the standards industry-wide, which benefits compliant firms and investors alike. The question worth asking isn't whether GIPS compliance is relevant to your business, it's whether now is the right time to embark on the path to become GIPS compliant.

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(Note: this guide focuses on investment managers. If you're an asset owner — a pension, endowment, or foundation — evaluating your own internal performance reporting, our asset owner GIPS compliance page covers considerations specific to that role.)

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Is GIPS Compliance Required?

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No. GIPS compliance is a voluntary standard, not a law or regulation, and the SEC doesn't require it. That part isn't where firms gettripped up.

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What's worth understanding is how close many firms already are to GIPS compliance without ever setting out to pursue it. The SEC Marketing Rule requires advertised performance to be fair and balanced, substantiated, and — in most cases — presented net of fees. Those requirements weren't written to mirror the GIPS standards, but in practice they've pushed firms toward much of the same discipline: consistent calculation methodology, defensible net-of-fee treatment, and documentation that can withstand scrutiny.

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That means a lot of SEC-registered advisers may already have some of the infrastructure GIPS compliance requires before they've ever considered pursuing it formally. If you're already calculating net returns consistently, applying one methodology across accounts rather than picking whatever looks best, and keeping documentation to back up what you advertise, the remaining work (constructing composites, writing the GIPS standards policies and procedures, and assembling GIPS Reports) is often a smaller lift than firms assume, especially if you hire a consultant like Longs Peak to help!

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The frameworks aren't identical, and there are places where they diverge. The GIPS standards permit either gross- or net-of-fee presentation, while the SEC Marketing Rule requires net returns whenever gross is shown; when local law or regulation is stricter than the GIPS standards, firms follow the stricter rule and disclose the deviation. We've written a full breakdown of how that reconciliation works, including sample disclosure language, in Navigating GIPS Compliance When Local Laws Conflict. But those are details to reconcile, not reasons to start from scratch.

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How to Become GIPS Compliant: The Building Blocks

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GIPS compliance rests on four core components, and implementation generally means building them in this order.

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1. Define the firm and scope the universe of portfolios. Compliance is claimed on a firm-wide basis, never at the composite, product, or portfolio level. Before anything else, a firm must define itself: which legal entities, offices, and business lines are included, and how the firm is held out to the public. This sounds simple but is often the most consequential decision in the entire process, especially for firms with multiple brands or affiliated entities. Once that's settled, inventory every account, pooled fund, and mandate that falls within the definition.

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2. Build the GIPS standards policies and procedures manual (the "P&P"). This is the operational rulebook: how discretion is defined, how composites are constructed, how cash flows are handled, how errors get corrected. A strong GIPS standards P&P reflects what the firm actually does, not what looks good on paper. Documenting it now, before it's tested by a real-world edge case, saves a lot of pain later.

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3. Construct composites and calculate performance. Discretionary portfolios with similar strategies are grouped into composites so performance is presented at the strategy level rather than as a cherry-picked account or model portfolio. Composite construction is typically where firms spend the most time, since it requires historical data review, judgment calls about discretion, and reconciliation across systems. Then asset-weight returns and calculate the required statistics for at least five years of compliant history(or since inception, if younger).

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4. Create GIPS Reports and file the compliance notification. The GIPS Report is the compliant, disclosure-rich presentation of a composite's performance that must be given to every prospective client. It includes required statistics, fee treatment, and disclosures that give context to the numbers. Once GIPS Reports are complete, the firm files the GIPS Compliance Notification Form with CFA Institute, a final required step before compliance can be claimed, and one that must be renewed annually.

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5. Verification (optional, but a good idea). An independent third party can test whether a firm's policies and procedures are designed appropriately and applied consistently firm-wide. It's not required, but it's widely expected in institutional circles (more on this below).

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We've written a full phase-by-phase walk through, including the judgment calls that tend to trip firms up (like defining discretion and handling historical composite membership), in A Practical Framework for Implementing the GIPS Standards.

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How long does this take? For most firms with a simple, straight forward structure, implementation can be complete in less than one month. For moderately complex firms or simple firms with longer track records, implementation often runs somewhere between three and six months from kickoff to a completed GIPS Report. Firms with complex legal structures, long historical track records, or messy underlying data should expect it to take longer. The upfront investment in earlier phases (firm definition and policy development) as well as the commitment from your team is what usually determines the timeline.

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How much will it cost? One of the questions we hear most often is "what does it cost to become GIPS compliant?" The honest answer is that it depends on a lot of inputs. Two firms of similar size can land in very different places depending on how many composites and accounts they manage, how many years of history must be reconstructed, how complete existing records are, how clean the underlying data is, and how much back-and-forth it takes to resolve open questions along the way. Because of that, we scope every engagement individually rather than pricing it off a flat rate card. The factors below are the ones that most reliably move the estimate up or down. Thinking through them ahead of time makes for a much more productive first conversation.

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What tends to drive cost:

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Composites and accounts in scope: How many strategies need to be reported on, and how many underlying accounts roll up into them? Being larger doesn’t always mean it will cost more, but we typically find that more accounts or composites often means more work to determine their proper placement.

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Years of history involved: Are you reconstructing several years (or since inception) of past performance or are you a brand-new firm just getting started? This becomes a bigger factor the longer the track record (which is often tied to data quality).

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Quality of existing records: How complete and well-organized is your historical composite membership documentation? This is often the biggest swing factor. We regularly see firms come in confident that their data is clean, only to find once we're in the weeds that it isn't. Being honest about this up front, even where the answer is "we're not totally sure," helps the entire engagement team start with the same expectations rather than discovering the real scope midstream.

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Verification plans: Do you intend to pursue verification alongside (or shortly after) the buildout? This adds coordination and review on top of the compliance work itself.

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Existing GIPS compliance experience: Are you starting from a blank page or do you already have some policies, procedures, or a prior composite performance to build on? The more existing foundation you have, the better.

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Responsiveness and internal bandwidth: How quickly will your team turn around data requests and answer questions? This affects the timeline most directly, but slow back-and-forth does add real hours too.

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We like to meet firms where they are. That might mean managing the full project or helping with the pieces that are most challenging or resource-intensive. We can usually find a way to add value even when a full-scope engagement doesn’t make sense. It’s also worth keeping in mind that some larger providers of managed services have minimum fees or engagement sizes, which may make them less practical depending on your needs and budget. If you’re still unsure if this is the right time, check out our post The Case for Pursuing GIPS Compliance Before You Think you Need It.

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Do You Need to Be Verified? No. Verification is voluntary under the GIPS standards. A firm can claim compliance without ever being verified.

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That said, verification is generally worth pursuing, particularly for firms competing for institutional mandates where GIPS compliance is treated as table stakes. Verification provides independent assurance that a firm's policies and procedures are designed in line with the GIPS standards and applied consistently — which carries real weight with consultants and prospects performing due diligence. It also tends to create useful internal discipline, since the expectation of independent review keeps processes tighter throughout the year.

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If you're earlier in your compliance journey or working within budget constraints, it's reasonable to build a solid compliance foundation first and pursue verification once the timing makes sense. For a detailed walkthrough of what the process actually involves, see our series, How to Survive a GIPS Verification.

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GIPS Compliance and the SEC Marketing Rule

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For US-registered investment advisers, GIPS compliance doesn't happen in a vacuum — it has to coexist with the SEC Marketing Rule. The two frameworks overlap in some places (both care about fair, substantiated, non-misleading performance) and diverge in others (fee treatment, required disclosures, what counts as an advertisement).

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Firms that manage this well tend to build one governance framework that covers both — rather than treating GIPS compliance and marketing rule compliance as separate workstreams run by different teams. We cover what that coordination looks like in practice, including how GIPS Reports, factsheets, and pitchbooks should stay consistent with each other, in What Good GIPS Compliance Governance Looks Like in Practice.

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Common Mistakes Investment Managers Make

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After helping firms through this process for over a decade, the same handful of issues come up again and again:

  • Treating GIPS compliance as a one-time project. Compliance is a firm-wide standard maintained continuously — not a binder that gets built once and shelved.
  • A "department of one." When all GIPS compliance knowledge lives with a single person, the firm is one departure away from a serious continuity problem.
  • Policies that don't reflect reality. A GIPS standards P&P that describes an idealized process — rather than what the firm actually does — creates real exposure during verification or a regulatory exam.
  • Weak documentation of judgment calls. Decisions about discretion, composite redefinitions, or benchmark changes need a paper trail, not just an outcome.
  • Underestimating the data work. Composite construction is as much a data reconciliation exercise as it is a compliance exercise. Firms that skip a thorough historical review often find problems later — usually during verification, which is the most expensive time to find them.

Maintaining Compliance: It Doesn't End at "Go-Live"

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Becoming compliant is a milestone. Staying compliant is the actual job. The most common breakdowns aren't dramatic, they're small process gaps that compound: a portfolio added to a composite late, a significant cashflow handled inconsistently, or a new strategy launched without a composite decision being made.

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The firms that stay clean build GIPS compliance into their regular monthly or quarterly performance cycle, assign clear ownership, and review their policies at least annually. We go deeper on what strong day-to-day governance looks like, including how to structure oversight without over-engineering it, in What Good GIPS Compliance Governance Looks Like in Practice.

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The Business Case for GIPS Compliance

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Compliance work rarely gets exciting attention internally, but the payoff is concrete. Firms that pursue GIPS compliance typically gain:

  • Access to platforms, consultant databases, and institutional searches that require it as a baseline
  • Credibility with allocators who use GIPS compliance as a proxy for operational rigor
  • Consistency across performance, marketing, and compliance teams that often didn't exist before
  • A cleaner foundation for scalability, since the process tends to surface and fix data issues before they become bigger problems

We've watched this play out directly with clients expanding into model delivery platforms and formalizing composite reporting for the first time. For real examples of how compliance translated into new business relationships, see From Compliance to Growth: How the GIPS Standards Help Investment Firms Unlock New Opportunities.

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Frequently Asked Questions

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What is GIPS compliance? GIPS compliance means a firm calculates and presents investment performance according to the Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS®), a voluntary, globally recognized set of ethical standards administered by CFA Institute.

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Is GIPS compliance mandatory in the United States? No. It's voluntary. The SEC does not require GIPS compliance, though many institutional investors, consultants, and platforms require it as a practical condition of doing business.

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Who administers the GIPS standards? CFA Institute owns and administers the GIPS standards, including the GIPS Handbook, Guidance Statements, and the Q&A database that firms rely on for interpretive guidance.

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How long does it take to become GIPS compliant? Most firms with a straightforward structure can complete implementation in three to six months. Firms with complex legal structures, long track records, or significant data cleanup will typically need more time.

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What is a GIPS Report? A GIPS Report is the standardized, disclosure-rich presentation of a composite's or pooled fund's performance that a GIPS compliant firm must provide to every prospective client or investor.

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Is verification required? No, verification is optional. However, it's widely viewed as a meaningful credibility signal, particularly for firms pursuing institutional business, and many allocators expect it in practice.

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Can smaller firms become GIPS compliant? Yes. Firm size doesn't determine eligibility. Smaller firms often benefit from outsourcing implementation and ongoing maintenance to a consultant rather than building an internal GIPS compliance function from scratch.

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Does GIPS compliance replace the need to follow the SEC Marketing Rule? No. They're separate obligations. A firm can be GIPS compliant and still need to independently satisfy SEC Marketing Rule requirements, particularly around net-of-fee presentation and substantiation of claims.

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How Longs Peak Helps

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Becoming and maintaining GIPS compliance touches every part of a firm: performance, operations, compliance, and marketing. That's a lot to coordinate on top of running the business.

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At Longs Peak, we specialize in guiding investment managers through the entire journey. We help write policies and procedures, construct and maintain composites, prepare GIPS Reports, and manage the verification process alongside your chosen verifier. We've helped more than 250 firms and asset owners get there, and we stay with our clients well past go-live to keep compliance running smoothly year after year.

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If you're weighing whether GIPS compliance makes sense for your firm, or you're already compliant and want a second set of eyes on how it's being maintained, let's talk.

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GIPS® is a registered trademark owned by CFA Institute. CFA Institute does not endorse or promote this organization, nor does it warrant the accuracy or quality of the content contained herein.

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