InvestmentView, one of the first software tools to use hypothetical comparisons to help advisers recommend mutual funds, is being re-launched today by Thomson Financial.
"In this latest version, we've focused most of our attention on improvements to report output rather than onscreen looks," said Michael Koppelmann, director of product management for equities, fixed income and retail wealth management at the New York-based unit of The Thomson Corp. of Stamford, Conn.
Thousands of advisers use InvestmentView to track more than 15,000 mutual funds. Because the product is used as a point-of-sale tool to support adviser recommendations of mutual funds, exchange traded funds, closed-end funds and variable annuities, Mr. Koppelmann said, the central focus of the updating program is improving reports so that investors can understand the output on their own or through a straightforward interpretation by an adviser.
Key improvements to the product include shifting placement of the data investors deem most important to the front of the report, reducing the typical report length to three pages, from four, and adding a portfoliowide "exposure report" to help advisers discern and more easily disclose to clients where holdings might be most at risk. The latter report shows a portfolio's top 10 holdings by company name, geographic region and industrial category.
Users also can access the Lipper Leader scores for the funds in their portfolio and find out whether any of their funds have won Lipper Awards.
The Lipper information is offered as an extra-cost option through a partnership arrangement between Thomson and Lipper Inc. of New York. The arrangement was made before the announcement of the Thomson-Reuters merger, which is expected to be completed in the spring.
"A typical single-user license will cost around $75 per month with the Lipper additions included," Mr. Koppelmann said.
Volume pricing is available and varies depending on the number of seats or licenses purchased. Raymond James Financial Services Inc. of St. Petersburg, Fla., and Franklin Templeton Investments in San Mateo, Calif., said that they intend to make the latest version of InvestmentView available to their advisers.
InvestmentView is also available as one of the 140 modules offered on Thomson One, the company's electronic platform for data and news, which is used by some 125,000 advisers and other investment professionals. The monthly cost of a typical Thomson One adviser installation ranges from $100 to $300 per user.
"The new version is really easy on the eyes," said Jason Bender, a wealth management executive at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia, who was involved in his firm's beta trials of the update.
Raymond James financial adviser Greg Cunningham, who is looking forward to using the new version, said he has subscribed to InvestmentView for more than 12 years. Mr. Cunningham, whose practice manages $60 million in assets, said that he and his clients find several of the current product's different "views" very useful and that the revisions should prove even more compelling.
A "benchmark view," for example, allows him to drill down and compare funds through a "scattergram" based on a three-year track record, "which is very easy to look at and understand" when an adviser is meeting with a client, he said.
"The views are very helpful because there are very few places to find funds that are doing better or worse than yours, without doing a lot of filtering," Mr. Cunningham said.
Executives at broker-dealers responsible for choosing mutual fund tools for advisers said that each has its own strengths and weaknesses.
A senior executive at one broker-dealer, who asked not to be identified, said that his firm offers comparable products from Lipper, Thomson and Morningstar Inc. of Chicago. When given a choice of tools, advisers "will use whatever they find easiest to explain to their customers," he said, describing the preferences as a "religious" issue.
Oliver Tutt, an adviser and managing director at Randall Financial Group LLC in Providence, R.I., prefers Morningstar's PrincipiaPro. He said that with 60% to 70% of the $20 million in assets he manages invested in mutual funds, he welcomes the comprehensiveness of PrincipiaPro's data and its extremely granular search and screening feature for managers.
Mr. Tutt said that Morningstar would have to disappoint him significantly before he would consider switching to a Thomson product, although he said that having greater flexibility in customer reports would be attractive.
Thomson acquired In-vestmentView in 1998 when it bought Chase Global Data and Research of Boston. The product became one of the offerings of the company's CDA/Wiesenberger unit, which at one time dominated the market for mutual fund information. As an independent company, Wiesenberger launched the first mutual fund tracking service more than 50 years ago.
Davis Janowski can be reached at [email protected].
