This year's Financial News Asset Management Awards has included a new category to reflect an industry shift of tectonic proportions: the Asset Managing Investment Consultant of the Year award.

The new category reflects the bifurcation between those investment consulting firms that have started to offer implemented consulting, also known as fiduciary management, a form of asset management, on the one hand, and those investment consulting firms that have remained pure consultants, on the other. The new category is for those firms that are offering asset management services; we have created a second new category, "Pure Consulting Investment Consultant of the Year", for those firms that have stuck to the traditional service.