“In addition to an excellent technology partner, we wanted to work with a firm that had specific experience in the Finance industry. ”
- Carl Hendley, Vice President Strategic Development
About
Motley Fool Asset Management (MFAM), a research-driven boutique asset management firm headquartered in greater Washington, D.C., offers a select suite of funds that invests primarily in high-quality, faster growing companies with sustainable competitive advantages and compelling market opportunities.
The Challenge
When MFAM approached Kurtosys, they were looking for a partner to build a new digital experience for their clients and prospects. But they were also looking for a technology vendor who had the experience to develop financial websites that contain data and understand compliance issues.
Design and UX were a key priority in the requirements. MFAM wanted to take a mobile-first approach to the website’s design but they also wanted all the elements and sections to be as user friendly and accessible as possible. This included the MFAM mutual fund and ETF products, regular news and thought leadership content, factsheets and other investor resources as well as company and team information. The site also needed to feature various calls-to-action including an ‘invest now’ button, opening an account and also subscribing to their popular newsletter.
From a Content Management System perspective, the Digital Experience Management (DXM) product that Kurtosys offered was attractive to MFAM early on, as it ticked off many of the requirements from a ‘back-end and front-end’ perspective. This included the requirements from a data perspective, with regular data from MFAM and their data partners needing to be easily loaded, managed and published onto their site, in a compliant fashion.
“In addition to an excellent technology partner, we wanted to work with a firm that had specific experience in the Finance industry. A partner that could navigate compliance, returns data, and most importantly – provide the best possible experience to advisors and investors.”
The Solution
Working closely with MFAM at every step of the project, Kurtosys designed and developed a fresh new website experience, powered by the Kurtosys platform. With a truly mobile-first approach, the website incorporates a Fund Center to house all of the MFAM investment products, with phase two in 2019 releasing further updates to include individual fund pages. The MFAM team can now easily publish not only data updates, but regular thought leadership and news articles using the DXM component.
Regular data and documents are fed into Kurtosys via data loaders and also via APIs from MFAM’s data partner. That data, plus the Fund Center module is controlled via the Kurtosys Data component, also making it easy for MFAM to add new investment products going forward. Kurtosys Data also allows MFAM to easily update fund disclaimers, commentaries and various ‘fund facts’ from a simple interface.
The WordPress templates were designed to MFAM’s requirements and incorporate the necessary modules and plugins to allow MFAM to work with their compliance team.
“One of the reasons we chose the Kurtosys Platform was because it gave us access to WordPress, an industry-leading Content Management System. WordPress provides not only the power and performance our visitors expect, but also the ability for our Operations and Marketing teams to make real-time updates and enhancements.”
The results
The finished MFAM site is great example of an asset manager adopting the latest web design methods and using the mobile-first approach to web design. Working to a phased rollout, the MFAM site will expand and improve over time as they look to introduce more content and features for their investors.
MFAM have had lots of positive feedback from clients and partners, citing how easily accessible the new site is and how it creates a much more streamlined user experience. Kurtosys is excited to work with such a prominent brand in financial services and looks forward to partnering with MFAM on future updates.
“Kurtosys were great partners throughout the build, sharing their expertise in all aspects of UX, UI, and general design.”