(1-, 3-, 12-months; 3-, 5-, 10, 15-years)
This is the subaccount's total-return percentile rank relative to all subaccounts that have the same investment objective in Morningstar's VA/L universe. The highest (or most favorable) percentile rank is 1 and the lowest (or least favorable) percentile rank is 100. The top-performing subaccount in a category will always receive a rank of 1.
Benefits
Percentile ranks within objectives are most useful in those categories that have a large number of subaccounts. For small universes, subaccounts will be ranked at the highest percentage possible. For instance, if there are only two specialty-utility subaccounts with 10-year average total returns, Morningstar will assign a percentile rank of 1 to the top performing subaccount, and the second subaccount will earn a percentile rank of 51 (indicating the subaccount underperformed 50% of the sample).
Origin
This is an in-house calculation, using the Morningstar database.