Information about managers varies. Performance data is pretty public, but any sort of qualitative assessment of the abilities of a manager to run their chosen strategy is usually only available to the subscribers of the research house in question (typically financial planners or institutional investors). And to make it a bit clearer, for me it's more about evaluating quality and having conviction in a manager and their fund rather than just performance as such.
You make a very valid point about active vs passive investments. The fact is that usually, the average active fund manager fails to consistently beat a relative market index. I would always argue that 'why would you invest in the average manager?' But that's because I have access to information that perhaps the average person does not. For this reason, I believe that for many people without these resources, a passive index solution like a market beta type ETF is probably more suitable when choosing managed funds. Otherwise you are taking on additional risk over an above the asset class in question by adding manager selection risk.
There are of course some other issues to consider when going passive. Some strategies (like India) are either unable to be accessed passively, or if they can be are likely to result in sub-optimal exposures due to the nature of those markets.
Secondly, be careful to distinguish between the different types of ETFs. Basically, there is Market Beta (market cap weight), Alternative Beta (a rules based weighting system not relying on market cap weight) and Active (full active management in an ETF wrapper). The term ETF is pretty broad these days, it's no longer just about cheap, passive exposure.
It sounds like your ETF usage is heading along the right lines, so that's great.
