JPMorgan Corporate Bond I CBFSX

The portfolio maintains a cost advantage over competitors, priced within the second-lowest fee quintile among peers.

The strategy's investment process inspires confidence and earns an Above Average Process Pillar rating. Independent of the rating, analysis of the strategy's portfolio shows it has maintained an underweight position in BB rated bonds and government bonds compared with category peers. The strategy’s management team earns an Above Average People Pillar rating. The strategy's parent organization earns the firm an Above Average Parent Pillar rating. People Pillar and Parent Pillar ratings for this strategy are indirectly assigned by a Morningstar analyst rather than algorithmically derived. Please see the notes following each pillar section for more details. The details of assigning methods can be found in each pillar section.

JPMorgan Corporate Bond Fund earns an Above Average Process Pillar rating.

The main contributor to the rating is the parent firm's five-year risk-adjusted success ratio of 57%. The measure indicates the percentage of a firm's funds that survived and outperformed their respective category's median Morningstar Risk-Adjusted Return for the period. Strong risk-adjusted performance also influences the rating. This can be seen in the fund's five-year alpha calculated relative to the category index, which suggests that the managers have shown skill in their allocation of risk. Lastly, the process is limited by being an actively managed strategy. Historical data, like Morningstar's Active/Passive Barometer, finds that actively managed funds have generally underperformed their passive counterparts, especially over longer time horizons.

Compared with other funds in the Corporate Bond Morningstar Category, this fund, historically, hews closely to peers' credit and interest-rate sensitivity over the past few years. Opening the analysis to additional factors, the portfolio has displayed biases over time, whether towards or away from certain fixed-income instruments. Relative to the category average, the managers have been underweight BB rated bonds in recent years. In the latest month, the strategy has also relatively underweighted BB rated bonds compared with Morningstar Category peers. Additionally, the managers have exhibited a sector bias away from government bonds over the past few years. Similarly, in recent months, the strategy also had less exposure to government bonds than peers. Finally, during the past few years, the fund leaned towards debt with three- to five-year maturities. In this month, the strategy also leaned more towards debt with three- to five-year maturities compared with its peers.

This strategy has a 4.4% 12-month yield, higher than its average peer's 4.2%. It also has a 5.0% 30-day SEC yield (a measure similar to yield-to-maturity). While a higher yield may deliver more income, it also tends to indicate higher credit risk. But that isn't always the case. Over the past 12 months, the average yield of the fund has been higher than the average yield of its Morningstar Category peers. The portfolio's average surveyed credit quality is on par with peers, with both the fund and the average being rated BBB.

Lisa Coleman’s veteran status, with over 25 years of listed portfolio management experience, brings a wealth of experience to the table. The average Morningstar Rating of the strategies they currently manage is 3.3 stars, demonstrating average risk-adjusted performance. Lisa Coleman has an experienced backdrop of support. The three listed managers boast 18 years of average listed portfolio management experience. The highest personal investment in the fund by any of its managers is between$ 100,000 and$ 500,000. That's on the low side--it would need to be more than$ 1 million for us to see the investment as sufficient to promote the strong alignment of their interests with the strategy's investors.

Note: The People Pillar rating is indirectly assigned by an analyst. The longest-tenured manager of the fund also manages a different product rated by an analyst. Their analyst-assigned People Pillar rating is combined here with the People scores (algorithmic or analyst-assigned) for the fund’s other managers on a tenure-weighted basis.

As of 2022, this investment stalwart manages more than USD 2.5 trillion in AUM. Composed of various global cohorts and diverse asset classes, the firm has more tightly integrated its capabilities in recent years, notably through the development of proprietary analytical and risk systems. Investment teams are robustly staffed and helmed by seasoned contributors. The firm’s strategies tend to produce reliable portfolios, and several flagship offerings are Morningstar Medalists. Manager incentives align with fundholders'; compensation reflects longer-term performance factors, and portfolio managers invest in the firm’s strategies as part of their compensation plans.

The firm’s funds tend to be well-priced, but they aren’t as competitive as many highly regarded peers of similar scale. Recent product launches include thematic and single-country strategies, both of which carry the potential for volatile performance and flows, along with misuse by investors. The firm remains intrepid when it comes to developing an environmental, social, and governance-focused framework and continues to move into other areas such as direct indexing through its 55iP acquisition and China through its joint venture, but these complicated initiatives take time to assess any real and lasting effect.

Over a 10-year period, this share class' 2.8% gain mirrored the category's average return. And it outperformed the category index, the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Corporate Bond Index, by an annualized 28 basis points over the same period.

The risk-adjusted performance only continues to make a case for this fund. The share class led the index with a higher Sharpe ratio, a measure of risk-adjusted return, over the trailing 10-year period. Often, higher returns are associated with more risk. However, this strategy hewed close to the benchmark's standard deviation. Finally, the share class proved itself effective by generating positive alpha, over the same 10-year period, against the category group index: a benchmark that encapsulates the performance of the broader asset class.

This share class is within the second-cheapest quintile of its Morningstar Category. Its competitive fee, taken together with the fund’s People, Process, and Parent Pillars, indicates that this share class is well-positioned to generate positive alpha compared with its category benchmark, explaining its Morningstar Medalist Rating of Bronze.