Overview

As a concept pitch books are the well-established device of choice for making and supporting presentation – whether to existing or potential clients. Used by investment managers the world over, for many, they are the sales tool of choice.

But despite their ubiquitous nature, they have never been simple to produce. From their humble paper-based origins as loosely bound pages to the modern day electronic equivalents, pitch books are meant to help tell a story, position a product and in particular to help a salesman paint an eye-catching picture while he puts the deal-clinching case.

Nor have pitch books ever been easy to maintain and keep up to date – just ask anyone who has had to rely on content that is always changing. Such is the lot of the financial services industry – a world where data and the information derived from it must always be timely and accurate in order to remain relevant.

More often than not those who regularly use pitch books as an initial sales tool, at least in more formal contexts will also prefer to customise them – focusing and targeting their pitch depending on the audience or target market, product or even type of client.

Such was the situation with PDL International – a fast growing distributor that provides services to clients in over 50 countries across the globe.

Key Challenges

For more than decade PDL has established itself as a significant global player and highly specialised in its market.

In order to diversify and strengthen its UK business with further institutional business, PDL was looking to crystallise its messaging and create new pitch book collateral that could be used effectively at the point of sale and that also had the potential to be used as a ‘leave behind’.

What PDL needed was to work with a vendor partner that had the ability to understand its complex alternative strategies as well as the ability to deliver a good value service to budget and on time.

CEO Sven Kuhlbrodt is an investments veteran with many years’ service with blue-chip City firms and PDL. He is very clear about his vision and what he wants.

PDL’s plans whilst fluid were also quite precise. They had specific and tight time to market needs, and so employed Factbook’s Pitchbooks service which was able to deliver on time and to their specifications.

Among PDL’s primary requirements – and key project outputs were a corporate presentation and of course institutional pitch books for their alternative strategies. These in turn required Microsoft PowerPoint templates from which the business could generate further presentations as needed. These templates were part of the project deliverables and they were also required to meet corporate guidelines as laid down by the business and its design team.

In Focus

PDL International

A global distributor of alternative investments to institutional clients and is the exclusive promoter of The Protected Asset TEP Fund plc (PATF), the largest Traded Endowment Policy (TEP) fund in the world*.

In addition, PDL International offers a life settlement product – the Cascade Portfolio™ and a range of alternative UCITS funds.

It provides investment services to both institutional and retail clients in over 50 countries across the globe and offers a range of alternative investments in a number of asset classes.

*Based on size and longevity as of August 2011.

Factbook Selected

After much exhaustive searching, Factbook was selected because, as an investment reporting specialist, it has deep knowledge and understanding of PDL’s business sector. Factbook met all the headline criteria that PDL were searching for.

After a series of briefing meetings, proposals and project planning sessions involving Factbook’s consultants, an investment writer, PDL’s marketing team and third party design partner, the project got under way and was quickly and painlessly delivered.

The solution

Over a period of less than 4 weeks Factbook created a main corporate presentation deck from scratch, and several other Pitchbooks, including custom built PowerPoint themes. Comprehensive copy was created by a Factbook sourced investment writer and all this was wrapped in a beautiful modern looking design which paralleled PDL’s corporate palette perfectly.

The resulting presentation templates squarely met expectations, branding standards and the given brief. They give the presenter scope to use all or only part of the whole slide deck. They are also flexible enough to allow addition of further slides – even those containing dynamic and fully updateable fund data at any stage.

“We are delighted to have worked with PDL International on this pitch books project. It is a clear demonstration of the scope and applicability of Factbook solutions to investment managers right across the industry”, says Factbook CEO Abbey Shasore.