DALBAR has chosen the winners of its annual Service Awards. Among the eight recipients in the mutual fund category for 2007, Putnam Investments is the winningest fund firm, having bagged the award a total of 16 times.

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DALBAR 2007 Key Honors Winners in the Mutual Fund Category

Mutual Funds	Times the Award has Been Earned
BlackRock	8
Evergreen Investments	10
The Hartford Mutual Funds	5
JPMorgan Funds	7
Lord, Abbett & Co.	5
New York Life Investment Management Service Company	7
Primerica Financial Services	5
Putnam Investments	16
RS Investments	4
Seligman Funds	11
Transamerica Funds	8

Company Press Release

Today DALBAR released the 2007 winners of its annual Service Awards. For more than a decade, DALBAR has conducted rigorous testing of service delivery and, each year, identified those mutual fund, broker/dealer, annuity, life insurance and retirement plan providers that are able to deliver industry-leading service to their customers.

The winners of this year’s award have emerged from an increasingly competitive field and represent the service leaders within the financial services industry committed to delivering the highest tier of service to their customers.

A win in 2007 marks the sixteenth award for Putnam Investments and the twelfth for The Hartford. Evergreen Investments and Seligman Funds are industry service leaders with 10 consecutive years of award winning experience.

BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, New York Life Bank and B/D Annuity Svc Center and Transamerica Funds have also been consistent in providing premier service by each earning the DALBAR Service Award for the eighth time.

Other firms that achieved excellence in service include: 1st Global, AEGON/Transamerica, AIG/SunAmerica, Ameriprise Financial Services, Inc., AXA Equitable EQUI-VEST, Genworth Financial, The Guardian Insurance & Annuity Company, Inc., The Individual Life Division of the Hartford, The Hartford Mutual Funds, JPMorgan Funds, Lord, Abbett & Co., New York Life Insurance, New York Life Investment Management Service Company, Pacific Life, PLANCO, Primerica Financial Services, Prudential Financial, RiverSource, RS Investments, Sun Life Financial, and Transamerica Capital.

"The level of performance achieved by these companies sets extremely high standards for competitors and in doing so improves the service levels to customers across the industry as a whole," said Csilla von Csiky, Managing Director at DALBAR.

The awards are based on systematic testing of customer service throughout the year. DALBAR conducts thousands of tests to measure how financial companies respond to the needs for service from their customers. Companies that exceed a variety of industry benchmarks after one year of testing earn the DALBAR Service Award.

The following table provides a list of all firms that were recipients of DALBAR’s 2007 Service Award for each category.

In addition, DALBAR named the financial service institutions that are Key Honors winners in 2007. Companies that meet industry benchmarks after one year of testing earn DALBAR Key Honors. In 2007, John Hancock Signature Services and The Equitable Accumulator were the only two firms to achieve this distinction.




DALBAR, Inc., the nation’s leading financial services market research and consulting firm, is committed to raising the standards of excellence in the financial services industry. With offices in both the US and Canada, DALBAR develops standards for, and provides research, ratings, and rankings of intangible factors to the mutual fund, broker/dealer, life insurance, property and casualty, and managed account industries. They include investor behavior, customer satisfaction, service quality, communications, Internet services, and financial professional ratings. 

Edited by: Erin Kello


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