For institutional investors, the ability to compare investment performance against a relevant benchmark provides an essential measure for monitoring and evaluating overall performance, asset allocation decisions and risk exposure. State Street Investment Analytics has considerable expertise in benchmark analysis, including building customized benchmarks at asset class or total fund level.

For customers who prefer peer group analysis, we offer a wide range of State Street Universes, performance comparisons which measure peer performance against similarly managed portfolios.

In the US, State Street Investment Analytics provides several options for customers seeking peer groups to compare and measure fund returns and characteristics. These include the State Street Universe^® - Extended State Street Universe^®, Wilshire's Trust Universe Comparison Service (TUCS) and the InterSec Research universes of international funds. Each universe provides a set of timely, statistically strong comparisons and presentation quality reports for customer use and decision-making, and each comes with its own unique advantages depending on a customer's perspectives and needs.

The State Street Universe^® provides data on more than 1,200 plan sponsors representing more than 20,000 portfolios with assets in excess of $2 trillion. This service provides peer rankings on performance, asset allocation, risk and portfolio characteristics, as well as comprehensive style analysis for equity and fixed-income investments. Standard universe comparisons are available for key sponsors and plan types: master trusts, public funds, corporate funds, foundations and endowments, hospitals, health and welfare plans, religious organizations, and charitable trusts.

In the UK and The Netherlands, State Street Investment Analytics utilizes the WM Company (WM) universes for peer group comparison, which are widely regarded as the largest of their kind and considered to be the industry standard.

The “flagship” universe, the WM All Funds Universe, is made up of 250 UK Pension Funds. Its aggregate value of over £503 billion represents over two thirds of all UK pension fund assets.

We also produce a subgroup analysis of the WM All Funds, the WM 50. This universe comprises 50 of the largest UK pension funds, each with a fund value of over £1bn.

In addition, SSIA has a range of other WM universes to meet the needs of individual clients:

• WM Charity Funds Universe
• WM Corporate
• WM Local Authority
• WM Life Funds
• WM UK Equity Specialist Universes
• WM Dutch Pension Fund Universe

State Street Investment Analytics provides comparative reporting, showing portfolio performance relative to any of the above WM universes, including percentile rankings and relative attribution on a quarterly or annual basis.

Additional information on our Performance Comparison can be found in the attached product sheets or contact Alastair MacDougall on +44 (0)131 315 5525 or email alastair.macdougall@statestreet.com.