Standard & Poor's Indices Versus Active (SPIVA)
The Standard & Poor's Index Versus Active (SPIVA) methodology is designed to provide an accurate and objective apples-to-apples comparison of funds’ performance versus their appropriate style indices, correcting for factors that have skewed results in previous index-versus-active analyses in the industry. SPIVA scorecards show both asset-weighted and equal-weighted averages, include survivorship bias correction to account for funds that may have merged or been liquidated during the period under study, and show style consistency for each style group across different time horizons.
A companion to SPIVA is the Standard & Poor's Persistence Scorecard. It tracks the consistency of active funds over three- and five-consecutive year periods, and measures performance persistence through transition matrices for three- and five-year non-overlapping holding periods. While SPIVA focusses on the active versus index debate, the persistence scorecard shows the relationship between past and future performance among active funds.
