Touchstone's Decade of Distinction: Active Management Wins Top Lipper Awards

CINCINNATI, OH – April 20, 2026

Touchstone Investments, a firm championing a “Distinctively Active” approach to fund management, has received significant industry recognition for its long-term performance. The company announced that two of its mutual funds, the Touchstone Ares Credit Opportunities Fund (TARBX) and the Touchstone Non-US Equity Fund (TROCX), have each earned a 2026 LSEG Lipper Award, honoring their superior performance over a 10-year period.

The awards highlight the funds' ability to deliver consistent, risk-adjusted results in highly competitive and distinct categories. The Touchstone Ares Credit Opportunities Fund was recognized among Alternative Credit Focus Funds, while the Touchstone Non-US Equity Fund stood out in the International Large-Cap Core classification. This dual recognition underscores the effectiveness of Touchstone's specialized, sub-advised model in navigating complex market cycles.

The Lipper Standard: A Measure of Consistent Excellence

The LSEG Lipper Fund Awards are among the most respected accolades in the asset management industry, prized for their quantitative and objective methodology. Unlike awards that might focus solely on raw returns over a short period, the Lipper Awards assess performance over three, five, and ten years, with a heavy emphasis on consistency and risk management. The winning funds are those with the highest Lipper Leader for Consistent Return rating, a proprietary metric that penalizes volatility and periods of underperformance.

For an investor, this means a Lipper award for 10-year performance signifies more than just a lucky streak. It indicates that a fund has skillfully navigated a full decade of market conditions—including bull markets, bear markets, economic shocks, and policy shifts—while protecting capital better than its peers. The 120-month lookback period, concluding in late 2025 for the 2026 awards, encompasses a turbulent era that included the unwinding of quantitative easing, geopolitical conflicts, a global pandemic, and a historic inflationary surge. Earning this distinction marks a fund as a truly resilient and reliable performer.

A Tale of Two Winning Strategies

The two award-winning funds showcase the depth of Touchstone's strategy, succeeding in vastly different segments of the market through partnerships with expert sub-advisors.

The Touchstone Ares Credit Opportunities Fund (TARBX), sub-advised by a subsidiary of Ares Management Corporation, has thrived in the dynamic world of alternative credit. Established in 2015, the fund employs a flexible mandate to seek total return by investing across the global debt spectrum. This nimbleness has been a critical asset over the past decade, a period that saw traditional lenders pull back due to stricter capital requirements, creating a fertile environment for specialized non-bank credit managers like Ares.

“Over the past decade, the Touchstone Ares Credit Opportunities Fund has benefited from the ability to move across credit markets and lean into opportunities as they emerge,” said Erik Aarts, Senior Fixed Income Strategist at Touchstone. “That flexibility has been central to navigating different market environments and delivering competitive, risk-aware results over time.”

This sentiment was echoed by the fund's sub-advisor. “It’s a privilege to be recognized for our research-driven approach and our ability to dynamically allocate across an evolving credit landscape,” said Chris Mathewson, Partner in Ares Credit. The fund’s performance metrics validate this approach, with TARBX ranking near the top of its Lipper peer group for 10-year performance and earning a 4-star overall rating from Morningstar for its risk-adjusted returns.

On the equity side, the Touchstone Non-US Equity Fund (TROCX) demonstrated excellence in navigating international markets. Sub-advised by the storied Rockefeller & Co., the fund seeks long-term growth by investing in non-U.S. companies. Its strategy is a classic, bottom-up fundamental approach, focusing on high-quality businesses with durable competitive advantages, strong balance sheets, and attractive valuations.

“A long-term, quality-focused approach has been at the core of the Touchstone Non-US Equity Fund since inception,” noted Tim Paulin, Senior Vice President, Investments & Product Strategy, at Touchstone. “We believe this positioning will continue to help the strategy navigate evolving global markets and uncover attractive opportunities for investors over time.”

This disciplined focus on quality proved invaluable through a decade of global uncertainty. Mike Seo, Co-Head of Equities & Senior Portfolio Manager at Rockefeller, added, “We strive to find high quality businesses that we believe are positioned for long-term outperformance.” The fund's results speak for themselves, with its 10-year annualized return significantly outperforming both its category average and its benchmark index, earning it a top-tier Morningstar rating.

The “Distinctively Active” Blueprint

These awards are not isolated successes but rather a validation of Touchstone’s core philosophy: being “Distinctively Active.” In an industry where many active funds are criticized for being “closet indexers”—hugging their benchmarks while charging active management fees—Touchstone has built its brand on a commitment to genuine active management. This involves partnering with highly skilled institutional sub-advisors who demonstrate high conviction in their portfolios, resulting in a high “Active Share,” a measure of how much a fund’s holdings differ from its benchmark.

Touchstone’s rigorous selection process for sub-advisors is centered on five key elements it calls SCOPE: Skill, Conviction, Opportunity, Patience, and Expenses. By entrusting fund management to specialists like Ares Management, a global leader in credit with nearly $623 billion in assets, and Rockefeller, a firm with roots dating back to 1882, Touchstone leverages deep, specialized expertise that would be difficult to replicate in-house. This model allows the firm to offer investors access to world-class talent across a diverse range of asset classes.

A Broader Pattern of Outperformance

The 2026 Lipper Awards are part of a wider pattern of recognition for Touchstone Investments, suggesting a firm-wide culture of excellence. The firm’s success was highlighted in the Barron’s 2023 ranking of Best Fund Families, where Touchstone soared to the No. 5 position out of 49 firms, a dramatic leap from its No. 42 ranking the previous year. This ranking, which assesses asset-weighted performance across a firm’s actively managed funds, placed Touchstone 9th for five-year returns and 11th for 10-year returns, demonstrating sustained, broad-based strength.

Furthermore, this is not the first Lipper recognition for the Touchstone Ares Credit Opportunities Fund, which also received a 2025 Lipper Award for its five-year performance. This consistent acknowledgment from a respected third party like LSEG Lipper reinforces the narrative that Touchstone's disciplined, sub-advised approach is a durable model for generating long-term, risk-adjusted alpha for investors. The accolades serve as powerful evidence that in an increasingly complex financial world, specialized and truly active management can deliver tangible value over the long run.