The FUND EXPERTS FORUM – an investment conference for private wealth managers organized by Forum Executive and fundinfo – took place in Rüschlikon on 11 and 12 April 2013. Held under the motto “BEYOND UNCERTAINTY”, the conference was moderated by Reto Brennwald of Swiss television SF1.

On day one, the event began with interesting panel discussions with Jörg Asmussen, Elizabeth Corley, Oswald Grübel, Prof. Dr. Beatrice Weder di Mauro and Czech economist and bestseller Prof. Tomas Sedlacek on the current debt crisis and the repercussions for banks and the asset management industry. The panel discussions were chaired by Mark Dittli (editor-in-chief of the Swiss newspaper Finanz und Wirtschaft) and Dr. Rainer Hank (head of the business and finance section of the Sunday edition of the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine). After dinner, attendees had the opportunity to network with one another.

On day two, the conference continued with a presentation on the topic of “trust” by Dr. David Bosshart, CEO of the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute (GDI). The presentation was followed by group discussions among the 200 participants on specific investment themes with 15 high-calibre portfolio managers in the inspiring setting of the GDI in Rüschlikon. To end the conference on a more relaxed note, Stephen Attenborough (commercial director of Virgin Galactic) presented Richard Branson’s current commercial space tourism project.

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To find out, for example, which fund provider received the most clicks on links to its fund documents yesterday or where in the world fund documents are being accessed from predominantly, or to view more facts and figures updated on a daily basis, just go to www.fundinfo.com/en/stats/.

This collaboration means that all Asia-based investors, as well as professional investors in the UK and the rest of Europe, now have free, direct access to documents, fund manager videos, prices and ratings of all available funds of Nikko Asset Management Asia. Since the announcement of the collaboration between fundinfo and the local associations IMAS and LIA (see Article of 10 January 2012), other local asset managers, including Fullerton and Eastspring Investments, have started working together with fundinfo (all these providers‘ funds are available online), and we will soon be counting several more Singapore-based asset managers, banks and media partners among our customers.

New features such as the use of a teleprompter is not appreciated by all customers as some feel that it makes the presentations less spontaneous and increases production costs. However, the fact that we are experimenting a little more with different camera angles and eye contact to make the interviewee appear more relaxed is generally welcomed. We have taken this suggestion on board and would like to encourage you to become actively involved in the New Year. We intend to maintain the current thematic structure and the list of presentations in the video. Not all fund providers exploit the possibility of integrating the videos in their various marketing tools such as newsletters, mailings and live presentations or on their own corporate website. The fundinfo video team is happy to assist you in this area if you have any questions or would like some ideas or other input.

Phillip Unit Trust is a financial institution offering a broad range of high-quality, innovative services to private and institutional customers. Phillip Unit Trust also publishes fund information on its website. Original fund documents supplied by fundinfo are now also available on the website, and there are plans to integrate fund manager videos, too, soon.

Click here to find out, for example, which ETF provider and which asset class saw the largest inflows last month and to view a wide range of other market statistics.

Although passive investments are less complex, there is still a lot to talk about: Swiss & Global of Zurich has commissioned its first ETF video production showcasing its “JB Precious Metals Funds”. Product manager Stephan Müller describes the asset class and replication method and explains how and why to invest in ETFs along with the advantages. More…

As well as a steady rise in the number of members and premium members, we have seen a dramatic increase in the volume of documents processed each month. When fundinfo started out, we were processing some 4,000 documents each month: today, that figure has increased to more than 150,000.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all fund providers for their good cooperation.

Depending on members’ needs, the raw data may be filtered, sorted and displayed in charts. In addition, members may download a list of MyFunds subscribers for their various funds. We are pleased with this successful, user-friendly new presentation of statistics and hope you enjoy trying it out.

Cinco Días is a leading daily financial paper in Spain belonging to the largest media group in the country (PRISA). Cinco Días hosts a fund research and information tool, now enhanced by fundinfo’s original fund documents and fund manager videos.

Unience is the leading social network for Spanish investors, with 50,000 registered users, and has become a key meeting place for advisers, fund providers, financial institutions, listed companies and investors. Last September, Unience launched a new website containing high-quality fund information, powered now by fundinfo with original fund documents and fund manager videos.

Since its launch back in 2005, fundinfo has collected and disseminated more than 3.5 million fund documents of more than 800 fund companies in 31 countries and 27 different languages, establishing itself as the leading hub for fund documents in Europe and Asia.

Drawing on a wealth of experience gained over the past few years, we have compiled a list of the “10 Best Practices in Fund Document Dissemination“.

1. Accurate document dissemination requires accurate basic information.
2. There are three options with regard to country-specific registration.
3. Metadata is required for fund document dissemination.
4. Document management should be centralised.
5. There are many different document types in addition to the KIID.
6. Document management processes should be linear.
7. Data errors should be corrected in the primary source.
8. Complexity increases disproportionately to the number of parties involved.
9. The best delivery method depends on the fund company.
10. Complexity is set to increase further.

1. Accurate document dissemination requires accurate basic information.
A minimum amount of information is required for fund documents to be sent to the correct destinations, namely the corresponding identifiers (the most important being document type, language and “valid from” date) as well as correct share class allocation.

2. There are three options with regard to country-specific registration.
Most fund databases currently feature country-specific registration (or “legal registration”) for each individual fund. However, they do not always allow a distinction between “funds for qualified investors” and “retail funds” within the different countries.
We often come across cases of share classes of legally registered funds which are not to be shown for certain countries for distribution reasons. For this reason, we specify both “legal registration” and “marketing registration” for each individual fund and country. Whether or not—and, if applicable, where—a given fund is to be shown in a given country is determined by a combination of these two characteristics.
Completely irrespective of this, each document has a country code indicating the countries in which the document is to be shown. If a given fund is shown, this feature determines whether or not the document is to be made visible. A good example of this case is that of the KIID: Here, it is recommended to activate the “generic English version” of the KIID right away for all EU countries even if the fund is not yet registered for sale in all countries. This ensures that the “generic English KIID” is automatically shown as soon as approval is obtained for a given country. That way, the KIID will not need to be replicated every time approval is granted for a different country.

3. Metadata is required for fund document dissemination.
Document type, language, publication countries, record date and other information is required for fund documents to be delivered to the correct destinations.
This information may be supplied in a separate file, typically in CSV or XML format. The main advantage of this method is the ease of machine processing that it offers, while the main disadvantage is that the PDF file is worthless on its own without the CSV/XML file as it lacks the necessary dispatch information.
For this reason, we developed a technical solution several years ago for sending metadata along with the individual PDF files. Working with service providers KNEIP and Morningstar, we have improved the specifications and made this solution freely accessible with no copyright restrictions. Meanwhile, we have seen this “embedded metadata” become the standard, at least for KIIDs.
It goes without saying that we accept a wide variety of transmission methods for fund documents, e.g. email attachments, uploading via a dedicated tool, ftp-push, ftp-pull and all types of CSV/XML link files. Altogether, we offer around half a dozen different document transmission methods.

4. Document management should be centralised.
Many fund companies are still largely structured on a national basis. This often results in duplicates and inconsistencies with regard to document dispatch when the same document is sent to different recipients by different units with different separate metadata files.

5. There are many different document types in addition to the KIID.
Of the over 1.2 million documents that fundinfo processed in the first nine months of 2012, 430,000 were KIIDs; the remaining 770,000 PDF files comprised 23 different document types, among which monthly factsheets still represent the largest share at 700,000.
Nevertheless, judging by the services offered by the various service providers, one gets the impression that it is only the KIIDs that require dispatching. Therefore, we advise not to focus solely on KIIDs but to organise document management in a comprehensive and systematic manner.

6. Document management processes should be linear.
Failure to adhere to this fundamental principle is the cause of major inefficiencies. If a fund provider allows documents to reach the point of sale via a number of different routes, there will inevitably be duplicates and inconsistencies.

7. Data errors should be corrected in the primary source.
We have seen various cases of data providers repeatedly sending the same data errors for more than a year. In order to prevent data that has been corrected in our database from being overwritten by incorrect data, we delete the incorrect data. If we were to overlook this step even just once, this would undermine quality control for subsequent data or document dispatches.
This is one of the reasons why we insist on delivery directly from the primary source. Initially, this request is often met by a lack of understanding especially when fund providers are convinced that they can solve all of their internal problems by hiring a third party. However, our experience shows that quality is the weakest link in a chain of document distributors. Worse still: a multi-level distribution chain can lead to an accumulation of errors, which can be virtually impossible to eliminate.

8. Complexity increases disproportionately to the number of parties involved.
We introduce a new enhanced database model virtually every two years to meet the ever-changing demands of our industry. However, more important still is our knowledge of our fund partners’ organisational structures. We often have more than half a dozen contacts for document delivery for a single client. With more than 800 fund companies on our platform, one can easily understand that is not always easy to reach the person able to correct the errors in question once and for all.

9. The best delivery method depends on the fund company.
For small fund providers with just a handful of funds, the best method of sending documents is by email; Large fund companies with several thousands of documents to dispatch every year to many different countries will require electronic interfaces through which they can do so directly. Therefore, we offer a wide variety of viable, proven methods.

10. Complexity is set to increase further.
Since its launch, fundinfo has acted as a document hub receiving its partners’ fund documents from their primary sources and dispatching them to a wide range of fund distributors and information platforms. Today, we are able to specify whether:

• funds are to be made accessible to all investors, to a select group of investors or not at all in the different countries;
• documents are to be made accessible to professional investors only or to all retail clients;
• documents are to be displayed on www.fundinfo.com and forwarded, or not, to a select group of media partners.

This database contains the entire universe of ETFs traded in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Hong Kong and Singapore.
The Hinder newsletter illustrates an example of the sort of searching and comparison available on the Swiss equities market. Important selection criteria are an ETF’s size and past performance. It goes on to say: “To the best of our knowledge, etfinfo.com is one of the few platforms that accurately calculates the past performance of ETFs: The performance figures published on etfinfo.com are based on the net asset value of the ETFs, taking into account payouts.”

Many financial clients appreciate the shooting of updates. Here, the fund manager may talk about his favourite stock, discuss in greater detail issues such as portfolio reallocation and performance trends over the past three to six months, and produce the latest charts to keep investors up to date.

Unless users instruct otherwise, their personal data such as first and last name and email address will be forwarded to fund providers whose funds the users have added to their “MyFunds” subscription list. However, users may still render their personal data anonymous: in order to do so, they must log in and deselect the corresponding disclosure option under “Email subscriptions“.

The purpose of this new measure is to ensure that users of our platform are better and more accurately informed of the country-specific terms of use and data protection policies.

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The deadline for supplying Key Investor Information Documents (KIIDs) is 1.7.2012, by which date the new documents must be available* for all funds sold in Europe. Given that KIIDs are produced for each ISIN and country individually, fundinfo is currently receiving an avalanche of documents that need checking and uploading in the shortest possible time frame.

While the average number of fund documents processed daily up until the end of 2011 was 4,000, the figure has rocketed to more than 60,000 documents per day in recent weeks: Many fund providers have decided to take full advantage of the one-year transition period and prepare and supply the new documents just a few weeks—or, in some cases, days—before the deadline.

Our data and document management team is working full out to process the current deluge of fund documents as quickly and efficiently as possible. Unfortunately, however, bottlenecks are inevitable. fundinfo’s primary focus is on supplying KIIDs for large international fund distributors: we are doing our utmost to achieve the broadest possible coverage of fund documents relevant to large distributors by 1.7.2012 whilst ensuring that all fund providers are dealt with equally. For this reason, we are in close contact with distributors in order to manage priorities as best as possible.

Delivery of documents to fundinfo

fundinfo operates the leading hub for the dissemination of original fund documents in Europe and Asia. In order to ensure the highest quality, when the platform was launched, we decided, and made a commitment to our distributors, to collect fund documents exclusively from fund companies or their sources.

However, in order to overcome the current bottleneck in document processing, in a departure from the current rule, we shall be allowing solutions agreed on a case-by-case basis and, in individual cases, shall be processing KIIDs from other sources as well for initial deliveries during a transition period ending mid September. After this transition period has elapsed, we shall revert to the original rule and collect fund documents only from fund companies or their sources.

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*For Swiss-domiciled funds approved prior to 15 July 2012, the transition period will end on 14 July 2014.