Consultancy firm Square Mile and data provider FE FundInfo have launched a fund dashboard in a bid to help advisers assess a fund’s ability to meet their clients’ needs.
The firms have combined Square Mile’s qualitative fund research with FE FundInfo’s quantitative analysis and aim to provide a significant amount of fund data in a simple and intuitive format.
The dashboard provides an interactive interface offering a snapshot of five elements advisers consider when selecting investments — opinion, performance, risk, cost and ethical weighting — as well as information on each pillar.
For the opinion function, the dashboard provides an in depth assessment of a fund’s ability to meet its objectives while the performance information shows a fund’s absolute annualised return over 3 years as well as its yield.
It also provides an assessment of the risk of the fund and the asset class in which it invests as well as its Synthetic Risk and Reward Indicator (SRRI) profile, an overview of the fund’s charges and an assessment of ESG credentials at a company and fund level.
Richard Romer-Lee, Square Mile’s managing director, said: “The aim of the fund dashboard is to introduce greater clarity on a number of areas to support advisers in their fund selection.
“It is designed to be simple and intuitive, delivering a large amount of essential fund information through an easy-to-interpret digital platform.”
FE FundInfo’s head of propositions, Stephen Mitchell, said transparency in the investment world was becoming “increasingly important”.
He added: “Ratings alone should not be used in isolation, but by providing them with clear and comprehensive information that looks beyond returns as part of broad fund research and analysis, the fund dashboard will play an invaluable role in giving a more rounded overview of a fund’s performance, both in the short and long-term.”
Martin Bamford, head of client education at Informed Choice, said advisers needed to work with a "huge amount of data" to justify the suitability of fund selection.
"Long gone are the days when funds could be selected based on performance alone. Square Mile and FE are bringing together some seriously useful data sets here, displayed in a user friendly and appealing way. The ESG credentials will be especially valuable as interest in sustainable investing continues to grow."
imogen.tew@ft.com
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