The service, a joint venture between Chelsea and Albemarle Street Partners, combines Albemarle’s fund screening tool AlphaQuest with Chelsea’s qualitative analysis to create a list of rated funds from some of the industry’s most experienced fund selectors.

The list includes funds which are believed to have at least a 60% probability of producing alpha over the next 12 months.

Funds which make the list are issued with a single ‘Elite Fund’ rating and, in its inaugural list, mandates from some of the country’s largest asset managers have made the grade.

With nine funds on the list, Schroders has taken the top spot in terms of number of rated funds.

Some of its portfolios which have been given an ‘Elite’ rating include former Cazenove MM funds Multi-Manager Diversity and Diversity Tactical, as well as Kevin Murphy and Nick Kirrage’s £600m Recovery fund and Andrew Rose’s £1.3bn Tokyo fund.

Schroders is followed closely by Jupiter, which has eight funds in the list, and Henderson, which has seven funds.

The Jupiter Merlin Balanced, Growth and Income funds made the cut, as did its £868m European Special Situations fund, managed by Cédric de Fonclare.

Henderson has dominated the European space in particular, with its top-performing £265m European Focus fund, as well as its European Growth and European Select Opportunities funds all making the grade.

Meanwhile, M&G and First State received six ‘Elite Fund’ ratings each, with the list including the likes of First State Global Listed Infrastructure and M&G’s UK Inflation Linked Corporate Bond, as well as their larger and better-known funds.

The final list will consist of 100-110 funds that have made it through the screening process, but some groups feature more heavily on the ‘Elite’ list than other.

Darius McDermott (pictured), Chelsea’s managing director, said: “We are looking to identify the very best funds in each sector. We use AlphaQuest, which we think is a good starting point to help us find managers that have historically derived consistent alpha, and then we do our qualitative research. Over the long term, we think these will be the best managers.”

The new venture launches less than two weeks after Richard Romer-Lee’s Square Mile Consulting & Research revealed its own list of rated funds, with similar fund names appearing on the list.