Welcome to our asset management marketing roundup
Asset managers are increasingly looking to embrace digital, offering innovative ways to engage with investors who are looking to trust those that are up to speed. From marketing funds on new look websites and social media accounts, to video marketing and written blogs, we here at Kurtosys scour the web to find the very best industry-specific examples of fund marketing and industry movers and shakers to save you the hard work.
This week’s round up brings you the latest industry movers, the return of MiFID II, a praiseworthy investment video and our upcoming content marketing webinar.
Movers & Shakers
Judit Éva Favero-Fürjész
Is now ➜ Marketing Manager at AXA Investment Managers
Was: Marketing Project Manager at ADVISOR – Open Financial Communication
Christopher Kay
Is now ➜ Digital Project Manager at AXA Investment Managers
Was: Intern Digital Project Management Officer at AXA Investment Managers
Charles Silverman
Is now ➜ EVP & Sector Head, Financial Technology, TMT Corporate Banking at Wells Fargo
Was: EVP & Group Head, Global Financial Institutions at Wells Fargo
Further information: FStech
Kurtosys expresses their best wishes to all starting in their new positions.
Website Spotlight: Victory Capital
Victory Capital Management is a multi-boutique asset manager based in Cleveland, Ohio, with a website that is as conveniently concise as its URL: www.vcm.com.
Victory Capital tends to do things a little differently to sites that we’ve featured before. Rather than hinging on the popular design of a long-form page, this asset manager has opted for a brief homepage that blends a carousel of images and features which, whilst perhaps suffering from being manual rather than automatic, retains clear call-to-action buttons, especially the all important links to specific pages for Investment Professionals and Institutional Investors.
One of the key homepage takeaways is the mega menu of funds; the user can toggle through a drop-down menu arranged by asset class. For the casual and serious fund peruser, it’s certainly a well designed feature.
The fund pages themselves are also highly commendable. As well as the usual fund descriptions and performance overviews, Victory Capital puts a human face in the form of the portfolio manager (literally) as well as each fund’s Morningstar rating. The most notable benefit on each page is the annualised returns in the forms of interactive graphs whereby the data can be viewed in monthly or quarterly time frames according to a user’s preference. Fund factsheets can also be downloaded as separate PDFs from their ‘presentation page’, and all of these features match Victory Capital’s orange-and-blue colour scheme.
Despite Victory housing ten different investment franchises, each of their strategies and funds are all encapsulated in a neat package of an asset management webpage. Whilst lacking a free flowing image carousel on the homepage and SVGs, the fund pages in particular are a doozy, which makes this a worthwhile feature for the AMMF website spotlight this week.
Fund(s) in Focus: JP Morgan Asset Management ETFs
In the first piece of news this week from global investment company JP Morgan, its Asset Management arm is set to list its first two ETFs for the European market on the London Stock Exchange.
The international head of ETFs Bryon Lake (who joined in March this year) explains that these funds – the JPM Equity Long-Short Ucits ETF and the JPM Managed Futures Ucits ETF – are expected to pave the way for a future of similar rollouts, with JP Morgan extremely keen to build their portfolio of active, strategic beta and alternative beta ETF capabilities. Lake states that these strategies will look to “advance the democratisation of hedge fund investing”.
With such a large asset manager announcing the launch of their own ETFs, and already planning more in due course, the trendy ETF hype looks set to continue for the foreseeable future.
Further information: Investment Week | Financial News | Fund Strategy
Wealth Manager Watch: deVere Group
One wealth manager which looks to be extremely active in their pioneering of fintech is deVere Group. Having already released a digital wallet for mobile firms (deVere Vault, which supports 22 different currencies), their foray into futuristic technology does not end there.
This past week, the deVere Investment app became available on iTunes and Google Play app stores. What this app allows investors to do is buy into low-cost structured notes, mutual funds and ETFs on the go.
Particularly invested in assisting expats financially, both deVere Vault and deVere Investment offer convenient ways for global transactions and investments to occur anytime, anywhere, all on mobile.
deVere Group has clearly recognised the potential, and success, of fintech for wealth managers; whether more will follow suit still hangs in the balance.
Further information: Wealth Management | Land Mobile | iExpats
MiFID II News
Like Walter White, there’s no half measures here at AMMF. Whilst we haven’t shed light on MiFID II related news in a little while, we’re back with a vengeance.
Rather than covering just one viewpoint about how the MiFID II initiative will affect the asset management industry, here is a whole brochure full of everything compliance and MiFID II. Whilst being released back in May, it’s full of salient points, featuring interviews and guest articles from consultant, tech experts, fund managers and MDs to refresh the memory on the topic.
What’s even better is that this is an e-brochure, for free, and can be downloaded at this link, so you can get reading right away.
As we approach the end of the calendar year, the January 2018 date for the drop of MiFID II is getting ever closer, and we’ll be on hand here at AMMF to bring all the latest gossip and goings on from the asset management sphere in regards to the directive.
Industry Insights
Sometimes you need to fit a lot of information into a short space of time. From surfing the investment web, this find from Investment News entitled Why are most advisers stuck in the trenches? really highlights how video content can do exactly this.
Rattling through a series of probing questions facing financial advisers today, this news-style discussion is informative, fast-paced and wholly digestible. Scott Conroy of Carson Group is the interviewee here, answering each question in a jargon-free, thoughtful and lunchtime conversation-esque manner.
This is a benchmark example of great investment content marketing. As Scott says, “This industry is so good about sharing ideas – there is a lot of great things that people can learn from each other”, and that is perfectly proven here.
Kurtosys Webinar
On Wednesday 25th October, Kurtosys is pleased to be joined by Richard Lander from wealth management content platform CityWire in a webinar discussing exactly what problems content marketers face in the financial industry.
Using results from CityWire’s 2017 survey of 174 advisers and wealth managers, Richard will be exploring the most prevalent issues the respondents identified, with a Q&A session at the end for a chance to have your financial marketing questions answered.
The webinar will last 30 minutes and registration is free. Places are going fast, so make sure you register right away at this link!
Social Media Spotlight: Nationwide Financial
In a fairly short-and-sweet social media spotlight this week is Nationwide’s investment resource page on Twitter: Nationwide Financial.
Certainly, this account really nails all of the social media sharing basics for financial services companies: bold, colourful and statistical infographics with relevant ‘sector hashtags’…
#SocialSecurity expectations are different from reality for many retirees. Learn more: https://t.co/6FRnDVdKaE pic.twitter.com/lxj3uqlcXM
— Nationwide Financial (@NWFinancial) October 14, 2017
…the promotion of various forms of content marketing, such as their webcasts…
It’s almost #webcast time! Tune in today at 3 p.m. ET for Social Security optimization strategies: https://t.co/13hHmzWcHF pic.twitter.com/EZC6DPhoNt
— Nationwide Financial (@NWFinancial) September 28, 2017
…and they have even delved into the art of targeted ‘influencer marketing’. Focusing on retirement services, Nationwide Financial has employed ex-quarterback Peyton Manning to discuss the need for retirement planning.
.@Nationwide Member Peyton Manning knows the importance of planning for retirement. Act today at https://t.co/Dlys6M3ar8 pic.twitter.com/dTeVZ6OfXO
— Nationwide Financial (@NWFinancial) October 18, 2017
These are just a few simple ideas that a financial services company can use to boost their marketing efforts, but they all contribute towards a far more affirmed and engaging social media presence.
And finally…
…they’re back! We leave you with the news that J.P. Morgan Chase & Co has taken the plunge to acquire its first fintech startup, WePay Inc., a payments company based in Silicon Valley. Considering the status of such a financial institution, it’s wonderful to see the convergence of a traditional player and a successfully disruptive technology company, besides the internally made app we saw from deVere Group earlier. The deal is shrouded in mystery (kinda), reported to be worth around $220 million. You can read more about the story from such news outlets as The Wall Street Journal and CNBC.
That’s all for this week, but be sure to check back soon for more asset management marketing highlights and fintech snippets from Kurtosys.
