All asset managers – be they large or small – find the process of collecting, validating, formatting and distributing data a time-consuming task. And unlike some other industries, in the asset management world, the consequences of dirty data can be acutely felt.
With this is mind, technology vendors are constantly building cheaper, faster and more sophisticated solutions for data management. For many businesses this often means that it turns out to be more cost effective to outsource or automate their data management process.
In fact, recent surveys have found that some 75% of large and medium-size asset management firms have already turned to automated solutions.
So for those firms still toying with the idea, when do you decide it’s time to outsource to a third party, automated service?
Product count
One way to judge your firm’s automation readiness is by how many products you are marketing and, looking forward, how this number may grow over the coming years. If you are marketing close to 15 products then traditional manual marketing techniques are probably no longer meeting your needs.
Indeed, if your firm has made the decision to feature more than 15 products then you have already taken the step to becoming an industry player. This means that your marketing team will likely have to step up the game if you want to get noticed.
If we consider that each of your 15 or so products require multiple forms of communication including factsheets, Key Investor Information Documents (KIIDs), data feeds, websites, fund tools and fund centres then it becomes clear that collecting the data to market this many funds can be a but of a headache.
Labour and time constraints
As the guys and girls behind a firm's marketing communications, it is the marketing professionals who are routinely chasing down data from disparate sources for websites and factsheets - trying to paint a resolute picture. So it seems that, whether we like it or not, a significant portion of data management falls firmly under the asset management marketer’s remit.
But time is valuable, too much time spent chasing down the right fund data hampers the marketing process. Outsourcing your data management process can speed up the output of required fund documents by automatically picking up and sourcing missing data.
Clients of ours have expressed delight in the fact that their automated fund factsheet production system now takes no more than 15 minutes each month on average.
You can’t keep up with the regulation
When you decide to keep your data in-house – you are fully liable for any missing or inconsistent information. There is no denying that it is a risky business, especially if you are not fully up to date with the industry’s regulatory developments, and we all know that the regulatory landscape is ever shifting.
There have been cases where out-of-date data has resulted in mis-representation of a fund’s exposure to certain asset classes, for example, which has meant that the factsheets were inconsistent with other marketing material for that fund. Occurrences like this can land firms in a lot of trouble. Not to mention the often unwanted attention from regulatory bodies, which in turn casts light on the quality of your audit trails and your company’s compliance more generally.
Outsourced services have one priority – accurate data, so it is their priority to ensure your data is clean, accurate and fully compliant with the regulator's requirements.
Further, when you outsource your data management you are no longer liable for any discrepancies – indeed, the services provider adopts the liability.
As marketers we are used to overcoming potholes in the workplace from time to time. But some hurdles are just too large to conquer. If your product menu is suffering or staff are spending more time chasing data than actually marketing then it could be time to rethink your options.
Marketing teams considering an outsourced data solution could look to FE Precision + . FE's all-in service puts you back in control of your data from sourcing to distribution providing a full audit trail for your data management process.
Read
Brand message: let your data do the talking
Calling asset management marketers: 5 steps to attractive fund data
Finding the One: what to look for in a fund data management service