Meritas Income & Growth Portfolio wins Fundgrade™ A+ Award

VANCOUVER, Feb. 3, 2016 /CNW/ - OceanRock Investments Inc. was awarded the Fundata FundGrade A+ Rating for its Meritas Income & Growth Portfolio, at a ceremony held January 21, 2016 in Toronto.

The FundGrade A+ Award is given annually to investment funds and their managers who have shown consistent, outstanding, risk-adjusted performance throughout the calendar year. This is the third year in row that the Meritas Income & Growth Portfolio has achieved the FundGrade A+ Rating in the socially responsible funds category.

"We are proud to attain the FundGrade A+, which demonstrates our ability to deliver outstanding risk-adjusted performance, relative to a competitive peer group," said Fred Pinto, CEO, OceanRock Investments Inc. "The current market environment highlights the importance of risk mitigation. Recent research shows that a responsible investment process, which takes into account environmental, social and governance factors, provides investors with enhanced protection against downside risk."

Only about five per cent of eligible Canadian investment funds attain the A+ rating, which represents the "best of the best," according to Fundata.

About OceanRock Investments Inc.

OceanRock Investments Inc. is one of Canada's fastest-growing Investment management organizations, managing $1.4 billion on behalf of Canadian investors. OceanRock offers a comprehensive range of managed portfolio solutions and individual funds to meet the needs of individual and institutional investors. OceanRock is dedicated to offering disciplined, risk-controlled diversified investment solutions to Canadian individual and institutional investors and has a core commitment to Responsible Investing through its Meritas SRI Funds. OceanRock Investments Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Qtrade Financial Group, which is a member of Desjardins Group, Canada's largest and the world's fifth largest cooperative financial group.

Commissions, trailing commissions, management fees and expenses all may be associated with mutual fund investments. Please read the prospectus before investing. Mutual funds are not guaranteed, their values change frequently and past performance may not be repeated.

About Fundata Canada Inc.

Fundata Canada Inc. has been providing data aggregation and dissemination services to the Canadian media and financial marketplace since 1987. Fundata is a major provider in the distribution of fund and stock information in Canada. Its database contains data on over 31,000 investment fund products. Fundata provides customized data feeds, top-shelf analytics, cutting-edge software tools, and seamless hosted web solutions for fund companies, back office systems, investment planners, banks, trust companies, resellers and redistributors, and online, print, and broadcast media channels. For more information see www.fundata.com.

About the Fundata FundGrade™ methodology

The objective of FundGrade is to rank and grade Canadian investment funds, on a monthly basis, against their peers using risk-adjusted performance metrics. Letter grades from A to E are used. Each month, FundGrade ratings are allocated as follows: 'A' is used for the top 10%; 'B' for the next 20%; 'C' for the middle 40%; 'D' for the next 20%; and 'E' for the bottom 20%. Ratings change on a monthly basis. The FundGrade rating system incorporates up to 10 years of history and uses three risk-adjusted performance metrics that are well known and widely accepted in the investment industry: (1) Sharpe Ratio—a measure of a fund's excess return relative to total risk. It is calculated by subtracting the risk-free rate from the fund's return and dividing by the standard deviation. (2) Sortino Ratio—a measure of a fund's excess return relative to downside risk. It is calculated by subtracting the minimum acceptable return from the fund's return and dividing by the downside deviation. (3) Information Ratio—a measure of a fund's active return relative to its tracking error. It is calculated by subtracting the benchmark return from the fund's return and dividing by the standard deviation of the difference between the return of the fund and the return of the benchmark.

See www.fundata.com/images/FundataFundgradeMethodology.pdf for specific details of FundGrade's ranking algorithm. To make the grades relevant, funds are only measured against similar investment products with comparable investment mandates. FundGrade uses the fund classification standards that have been defined by the Canadian Investment Funds standards Committee (CIFSC). Funds are ranked and graded within CIFSC categories.

About the FundGrade A+ methodology

The FundGrade A+ Rating is a supplemental calculation to the FundGrade ratings and is performed at the end of each calendar year. Eligible funds must have received a FundGrade rating for each month in the previous calendar year. A score is assigned to each monthly FundGrade rating, as follows: A grade = 4; B grade = 3; C grade = 2; D grade = 1; E grade = 0. For each fund a 'GPA-style' calculation is made by adding up the values for the monthly scores and dividing by 12. Any fund with a GPA of 3.5 or higher receives a FundGrade A+. For specific details of FundGrade's ranking algorithm, see www.fundata.com/images/FundataFundgradeMethodology.pdf. FundGrade A+ was designed to identify not only the best-performing funds, but also the most consistent.

Meritas Income & Growth Fund

Meritas Income & Growth Portfolio Series A was awarded the Fundata FundGrade A+ Rating for the calendar year 2015 in the SRI—Fixed Income category, for the one-year period ending December 31, 2015, out of a total of 23 funds.

Performance for the fund for the period ended December 31, 2015, is as follows: 3.74% (1 year), 5.47% (3 year), 4.42% (5 year), 4.22% (since inception October 21, 2010).

Fundata's FundGrade A+ Rating is awarded for performance during a calendar year and not multiple year periods.

SOURCE Qtrade Financial Group

Sean Kelly, Senior Communications Specialist, Qtrade Financial Group, 778.328.7583, [email protected]