ETF. com is a third-party organization which specializes in providing resources (news, analysis, and education) on Exchange Traded Funds. The firm’s marquee properties are its website, ETF.com, and its print publication, ETF Report. Annually, ETF.com organizes awards for ETFs and ETF service provider in approximately 30 categories. Award winners are selected in a three-part process. 1) NOMINATION – The process begins with open nominations where interested parties were invited to submit nominations for awards in the available categories (with there being one winner per category, unless a tie resulted). Self-nominations are accepted. Newfound Research employees did provide self­-nominations to ETF.com prior to 2018 and again in 2019. ETF.com announced that as part of the 2016 awards, “hundreds of nominations from participants in all corners of the ETF space” were received. However, Newfound is unable to determine any statistics as to the number of submissions per category as ETF.com does not provide that level of disclosure. As such, it is possible that the number of nominations in a category could be insignificant and therefore the selection of a winner or finalist would be less meaningful than it would be otherwise. 2) SELECTION OF FINALISTS – ETF.com Awards Nominating Committee – made up of senior leaders at ETF.com, Inside ETFs, and senior members of the FactSet ETF Analytics team – select up to five finalists in each category (unless a tie resulted, in which case there could be more than five finalists in a category). 3) SELECTION OF WINNER – Prior to 2019, the winners were selected from these finalists by a majority vote of the ETF.com Awards Selection Committee, which is a group of independent ETF experts (as determined by ETF.com). In 2019, awards for Service Providers categories had a distinct voting committee that included one representative from each issuer and one representative from each listing exchange. ETF.com is not affiliated with Newfound Research. There were no payments made in connection with the award. After winners were selected, Newfound Research purchased one seat to attend the 2016 awards ceremony dinner and two seats to attend the 2018 awards ceremony dinner. Newfound Research has not purchased any plaques, article reprints, or other similar indicia of the award. Ratings and awards may not be representative of any one client’s experience and are not indicative of Newfound Research’s future performance. Nominees were not required to be members of any organization to be eligible to receive an award.