AIC Group of Funds has earned Dalbar's 2005 Mutual Fund Service Award, marking the third consecutive year in which the Burlington-based company has been bestowed with this honour.

“Our congratulations go out those at AIC responsible for ensuring that their
clients are being well-served. They have demonstrated time and again that their
business model places superior customer service on a very high pedestal,” said
Mark McDonald, Manager of Client Relations at Dalbar.

“Their clients have been in very good hands for a long time, showing that despite
challenges that they have faced over the last few years in a number of areas,
they have not lost sight of the importance of placing the customer first,” he
added.

Honourable mention was given to Franklin Templeton Investments, BMO Mutual
Funds, and Altamira Investment Services for placing in the first quartile in
Dalbar’s year-end rankings.

Dalbar also announced that Franklin Templeton Investments has won the 2005
Mutual Fund Service Award for service to French-speaking clients. 2005 marks
the first year that the company has captured this distinction, after several years
of placing in the first quartile.

“Franklin Templeton is another company that has worked very hard to serve its
clients, whether they are French-speaking or English-speaking, and they should
be proud of this accomplishment,” said McDonald. Other top-quartile firms were
Altamira Investment Services and BMO Mutual Funds.

The Award is given to the company which places first in Dalbar’s year-end
customer service rankings, which are based on evaluations made over a calendar
year in four categories: quality of telephone service representatives,
effectiveness of e-mail communication, telephone wait times, and e-mail
response times. By playing the role of the unitholder in over 2000 telephone
calls and over 400 e-mails throughout the year, Dalbar actively experiences the service that the average Canadian mutual fund investor would receive from each company.

Dalbar, Inc. is a leading financial services research firm with offices in Toronto
and Boston, specializing in measuring the performance of institutions and
financial professionals in areas such as service quality, customer satisfaction, and
communications effectiveness.