Overview

Undeniably a vital aspect of promoting and distributing complex products such as collective investments – OEICS, pension funds and their like – is educating and informing the market. That applies whether the market is the wider retail space or the professional, adviser or institutional markets. Commoditised products excepted, a knowledgeable market makes informed choices that lead to repeat buys. It is also more likely to nurture brand awareness. In any market such observations are noteworthy.

Although there is no specific requirement to do so by either the UK or European regulator, most firms that promote or distribute investment products in the UK take up their option to educate their market – astutely seeing the marketing and public relations opportunity. And by and large the UK domestic market does this well: using a variety of tools and media. Of the many different types of client communications tools, the investment report is well suited to this purpose. Although it can take many shapes and guises, it can often serve a higher informational purpose – and is certainly preferable to a general data dump grappled from a resource-poor investment marketing team.

Whilst not trivial, creating effective investment reports doesn’t have to be laboured or terribly challenging. The end purpose and target audience must be kept firmly in mind; but it should also be ensured that all content is accurate, concise and most importantly (and in order to remain relevant), delivered on time to those who need it. A well executed set of investment reports can be invaluable to those who consume it each month; providing answers before questions are asked. Investment teams, external fund managers and clients of all profiles will look forward to receiving it – whether their purpose is decision support or performance monitoring.

This is what the business wanted to achieve at Ignis Asset Management – an asset manager that also distributes a range of global investment services. Managing its parent group’s substantial assets, Ignis also provides dedicated fund management expertise to 6 million customers. Among its varied business units, Ignis operates a specialist alternatives team from its headquarters in Glasgow and London.

Factbook Selected

An internal review at Ignis indicated that an upgrade to its investment reporting was required. In order to do this Ignis needed to identify and work with a partner that could help deliver a superior set of reports to standard as well as provide flexible new formats.

Senior management had clear vision, desire and a client community with strong demand for investment reporting that was informative, accurate and timely – month in, month out.

Factbook demonstrated an understanding of the requirements and was selected for its reputation of being a reliable reporting provider, and for its ability to support legacy and third party data sources as well as for its high quality output.

Eddie Middleton, Head of Portfolio Analytics at Ignis Asset Management:

“We chose Factbook to help standardise our Investment Reporting Suite, creating a brand new set of comprehensive reports for the vast majority of our fund range across multiple asset classes, and to reduce production time and effort using their Studio 10 platform. I am pleased to report that they have delivered on all counts and we look forward to our continued working relationship with Factbook.”

So what has changed?

Factbook was set a challenge and was able to meet it by leveraging its deep industry experience and superior technology. By deploying its Studio 10 platform in a hosted environment, Factbook was able to deliver ready to run productions enabling Ignis to remain in full control.

Reporting is now consistent across the board – giving performance team members and fund managers alike complete confidence in delivered output. Redesigned reports are now based on templates that reflect corporate branding, content is user-friendly and more informative making it easier for report consumers to digest what is being communicated. Importantly, Factbook’s ability to interface with data at source means that not only can production times be vastly reduced; it also means that the reporting cycle as a whole has been brought forward.

Abbey Shasore, CEO at Factbook

“We were able to deliver this project for Ignis from a position of confidence despite the many challenges that would have tripped up many competing systems. Once again Factbook Studio 10 with its proprietary workflow and process management reporting proves our leading position in investment reporting.”

Ignis in Focus

Ignis Asset Management manages substantial assets, providing dedicated fund management expertise for Phoenix Life’s 6 million customers. Ignis also serves third-party clients. It has £81.5bn* in assets under management and distributes a range of global investment services.

*Source: Ignis at 31 December 2011.

At Ignis, Factbook Investment Reporting delivers high quality client ready investment reports which include multiple stock attributions, ex-post risk, activity and management information reports; created, updated and disseminated at the click of a single button.