CRAWFORD INVESTMENT COUNSEL INC

Crawford Investment Counsel Inc. is an investment management firm based out of Atlanta, Georgia. The company was originally established in 1980 and has since expanded its operations to include an additional location in Ponte Vedra, Florida. Crawford Investment Counsel is owned by its employees and is currently headed by founder John H. Crawford, who is still with the company today acting as its CIO. The company conducts its research both internally and externally, utilizing a fundamental methodology to make its investment decisions. Crawford Investment Counsel invests in the public equity and fixed income markets within the U.S. using a bottom up investment approach, benchmarking its performances against the Russell 1000 Value, S&P 500, and Barclays Capital indexes. The company invests most heavily in the finance sector, which alone makes up over a fifth of its total asset allocations, and also invests in the health care, consumer discretionary, information technology, industrials, consumer staples, and energy sectors, among other sectors to a lesser degree, in order of decreasing allocation. Crawford Investment Counsel holds its allocations an average of approximately 19 quarters and, in the most recent quarter, has had a relatively low turnover rate of 5.33%. The company operates with 41 employees of which 18 are investment professionals. Crawford Investment Counsel oversees over $4.1 billion in total assets under management spread across almost 2,000 total accounts, all of which are discretionary accounts except for 9 which make up a minor $51 million of its managed assets. Both of the company’s total number of accounts and total assets under management have been increasing in recent years with its total assets under management growing significantly from just over $2 billion back in 2010 to over twice that amount today. Crawford Investment Counsel offers a variety of mutual funds including its Dividend Growth, Dividend Opportunity, and Dividend Yield funds.