Major Sections of GIPS Standards

The provisions within the GIPS standards are divided into the following nine sections:

1. Fundamentals of Compliance: Several core principles create the foundation for the GIPS standards, including properly defining the firm, providing compliant presentations to all prospective clients, adhering to applicable laws and regulations, and ensuring that information presented is not false or misleading.
2. Input Data: Consistency of input data used to calculate performance is critical to effective compliance with the GIPS standards and establishes the foundation for full, fair, and comparable investment performance presentations.
3. Calculation Methodology: Achieving comparability among investment management firms’ performance presentations requires uniformity in methods used to calculate returns. The GIPS standards mandate the use of certain calculation methodologies to facilitate comparability.
4. Composite Construction: A composite is an aggregation of one or more portfolios managed according to a similar investment mandate, objective, or strategy. The composite return is the asset-weighted average of the performance of all portfolios in the composite. Creating meaningful composites is essential to the fair presentation, consistency, and comparability of performance over time and among firms.

1. Disclosure: Disclosures allow firms to elaborate on the data provided in the presentation and give the reader the proper context in which to understand the performance. To comply with the GIPS standards, firms must disclose certain information in all compliant presentations regarding their performance and the policies adopted by the firm. Although some disclosures are required for all firms, others are specific to certain circumstances and may not be applicable in all situations. Firms are not required to make negative assurance disclosures (e.g., if the firm does not use leverage in a particular composite strategy, no disclosure of the use of leverage is required). One of the essential disclosures for every firm is the claim of compliance. Once a firm meets all the requirements of the GIPS standards, it must appropriately use the claim of compliance to indicate compliance with the GIPS standards.
2. Presentation and Reporting: After constructing the composites, gathering the input data, calculating returns, and determining the necessary disclosures, the firm must incorporate this information in presentations based on the requirements in the GIPS standards for presenting investment performance. When appropriate, firms have the responsibility to include in GIPS compliant presentations information not addressed by the GIPS standards.
3. Real Estate: Unless otherwise noted, this section supplements all of the required and recommended provisions in Sections 0–5. Firms should note that certain provisions of Sections 0–5 do not apply to real estate investments or are superseded by provisions within Section 6. The provisions that do not apply have been noted within Section 6.