Welcome to our fund marketing round-up
At Kurtosys we live and breathe digital marketing for asset management, so we’ve collated some industry highlights that hopefully you’ll find useful. From the latest fintech software to an upcoming trade show, we scour the interweb so you don’t have to.
This week’s round up brings you an AI fund, a look at the new Schroders website, some social media from Legg Mason and some good news for UK Fintech startups from the Bank of England.
Fund in focus – S&W AI Fund
Smith & Williamson have launched an Artificial Intelligence equity fund. AI is a hot topic for investments globally, with Google announcing their own venture capital fund for AI startups, called Gradient Ventures. AI is becoming more involved in our everyday lives such as voice-activated personal assistants and features in our cars, but it’s also impacting the jobs industry as more processes can be automated by increasingly more intelligent machines.
The S&W fund will be managed by former Pictet managers Chris Ford and Tim Day. We love the way S&W have used an interactive video as part of their marketing for the fund launch. Well worth checking out.
Further reading: International Adviser | International Investment
Website Spotlight – Schroders.com
We took a dive into Schroders new website (OK, so it actually launched a few months ago). What looks like a global rebrand, Schroders have completely redesigned their site with bold colours and typography into a very clean and de-cluttered format. Drilling down into the UK asset manager site, you can see a fantastic blend of content and fund data, with interactive panels and the ability to immediately start ‘favouriting’ funds via the star icon.
The entire site has been made perfectly responsive, with attention paid to how the information can be condensed and ‘swipeable’ on mobile devices, neatly avoiding the super-long-page-experience some sites suffer from.
The fund product pages have benefited from the same design thinking, with clear panels for data with the option to switch from tabular to chart. All the associated fund literature is easy to find and clearly laid out.
Great job Schroders – we love the new site and rebrand, a big thumbs up from us. It also remains part of our 50 Best-Designed Asset Management Websites gallery.
People Moves – Stephanie Flanders
We were interested to learn that JP Morgan Asset Management’s chief economist Stephanie Flanders is returning to journalism with a move to head up a new unit called Bloomberg Economics. She will head the new 120 strong team in October, which will combine staff from Business Intelligence and Bloomberg News. We’ve always been a fan of Stephanie’s tweets, and she still holds the second spot in our top 100 women in finance on Twitter!
Further reading: Financial News | Investment Week
MiFID II News
Wealth Manager just reported that a recent survey found that 90% of buy-side firms are at risk of non-compliance by the Mifid II deadline in January 2018.
Kurtosys White Paper: MiFID II for Asset Managers: Threat or Opportunity?
The European Union (EU) MiFID II regulations, which come into effect in January 2018, will have a huge impact on the asset management industry. But many managers do not yet have the technological solutions to comply and thrive in the new regime and software providers expect a capacity crunch as investment houses rush to prepare. We look at some of the issues and opportunities.
Social Media Spotlight
We noticed some eye-catching tweets from @LeggMason recently. As part of a financial planning campaign, Legg Mason have put together a series of messages with custom images to highlight thought leadership and research, including their 2017 Global Investment Survey. Here’s some of the examples:
White Paper – Global Asset Management 2017: The Innovator’s Advantage
This report by the Boston Consulting Group takes a detailed look at the state and outlook for the global asset management industry. In 2016, the industry faced some challenges with the revenue pool of traditional managers falling worldwide, along with their profits. This report was the source for many recent articles concerning the falls in revenue from asset managers in 2016, despite the growth of AUM.
Upcoming Events
State of Digital Money 2017 JULY 22ND | 2017 LOS ANGELES
Los Angeles’ premier professional event and conference focused on the conversation of the evolving trends and emerging technologies disrupting the global financial system and worldwide transactions.
FinTech Focus – Bank of England paves way for payment startups
The Bank of England just announced that they’re giving fintech startups direct access to the UK’s RTGS payments system. This is big news for many Fintech startups who will be able to utilise the Real-Time Gross Settlements systems directly without having to work alongside the big banks. Because legislation still needs to go through parliament, we might have to wait until 2018 before we see fintechs being able to use this access.
Further reading: City AM | Finextra
And finally…
We loved this article from Financial News – The trendiest part of finance, according to Google. By dipping into Google Trends, they’ve looked at the global popularity of search terms such as private equity, hedge funds and fintech. As you can see from the chart, fintech has gained huge popularity in the past five years.
That’s all for this week, be sure to check back soon for more Fund Marketing and fintech snippets from Kurtosys.
