Overview

The Factbook Solution Suite at Merian Global Investors and the report documents it produces each month end and quarter end are consistent, high quality documents that comply with corporate branding guidelines and satisfy regulatory disclosures. From segregated account reports to factsheets and QIRs, the risks that accompany manual production processes are vastly minimised due to robust automation. Factbook Studio 10’s native functionality provides Merian Global Investors with complete flexibility in their reporting.

With Factbook automation, report production bandwidth is now increased, and capable of coping with growing future demands. In one example, monthly fund factsheet production has grown to over 4,000 each month, delivered within a few business days after month end.

Key Challenges

With a long history, proud heritage, and coming from one of the oldest names in the industry, Merian Global Investors (MGI) also has considerable demands for high quality and timely reporting.

As you would expect of a business of its size and prestige thousands of documents are produced each month. Varied content and multiple formats are required by increasingly knowledgeable investors and clients. Long gone are the days of a ‘one size fits all’ report sent to each and every client with standard data and charts.

It was extremely important that Merian identify a partner that could deliver superior, accurate and concise reports and get them delivered on time, every time. A vendor partner prepared to co-own the challenges and take on the ‘heavy lifting’ process change that automation introduces.

Although a number of vendors are readily at hand, few are able to combine flexibility with know-how and scalability with a proven ability to deliver.

In Focus

Merian Global Investors is a leading, independent, global asset management firm. While the name may suggest a relative newcomer, the firms roots in fact go back many years.

The company as it is now known was formed in June 2018 when its management team, together with funds operated by the global growth private equity firm, TA Associates, acquired the “single-strategy” investment capabilities of Old Mutual Global Investors.

As an independent firm, Merian is committed to continuing to build a successful, specialised asset management business. Central to the future of the business is a belief that their clients appreciate the value of active investment management when it delivers what they reasonably expect.

Merian’s strategy is to seek to attract and retain talented investment professionals, who are experts in their particular fields, and to provide them with the operational, risk management and distribution environment and support they need in order to thrive, yet without encumbering them with a blunt “house view” imposed by a chief investment officer.

Factbook Selected

Factbook clearly demonstrated a thorough knowledge of investment fund data aggregation and transformation. They also excelled at producing various design options for the various documents. Factbook are unique in having a comprehensive set of specialist solutions from high quality client reports all the way through to fund factsheets and professional pitchbooks.

“We chose Factbook to help us overhaul our entire investment reporting process. Starting with streamlining data collation and using their unique flexibility to transform this data into the myriad number of report library elements we required. We are producing more report documents, and we have seen a reduction in the time and resources needed to create all of our reporting documents.

Factbook people are knowledgeable and experienced with genuine ‘can do’. They have done what they said they would do – and that is to deliver what we need.”

(Head of Performance & Client Reporting, at Merian Global Investors)

So what has changed?

The Factbook Solution Suite at Merian and the report documents it produces each month and quarter end are consistent, high quality documents that comply with corporate branding guidelines. From segregated account reports to factsheets and QIRs, the risks that accompany manual production processes are vastly minimised due to robust automation. Factbook Studio 10’s native functionality provides Merian with complete flexibility in their reporting.

“The scope and vision of Merian’s project was ambitious and full of challenges. We were able to deliver on all counts by deploying Studio 10 with various modular solutions. Throughput has massively increased as well as data quality. Merian now have a reporting suite fit for the future to match their status as a leading global asset manager”, said Factbook CEO Abbey Shasore.