News

It is becoming more and more evident that the wealth and asset management industry is going through a digital transformation. Changing technology is making space for a new breed of digital competitors with innovative solutions aiming to disrupt the industry.

At FE Invest, our investment philosophy is built around managing and adjusting risk to deliver optimal returns for clients. Below we look at 5 key investment successes our robust methodology has offered in 2018.

FE today announced that UK Gilts topped the sector charts in the latest FE Passive Crown Ratings rebalance with 38% of funds achieving the maximum five FE Passive Crown Rating. Following closely behind were Property (30%), North American Equities (29%) and Emerging Markets Equities funds (29%), whilst no Sterling Corporate Bond funds achieved the top accolade for a third rebalance in a row.

While much attention since MiFID II came into force a year ago has been on cost disclosure, the European regulator ESMA has published two consultation papers (CPs) on integrating sustainability risks and factors in MiFID II, tightening up on suitability of advice, and in UCITS and AIFMD, incorporating them in product governance.

FE’s latest bi-annual Crown Fund Ratings rebalance[1] has awarded 336 funds with the highly-prized 5 FE Crowns, of which 16 are newcomers and 51 have jumped two or more FE Crowns to achieve the top accolade.

Following its CP18/29 at the end of last year, the FCA has now opened its doors to firms and funds from Europe to register their intention to apply for full UK authorisation following Brexit.

For many, the New Year is a time for change, a time to rid yourself of the previous year’s sins and a time to pick up some good, new habits. Charles Younes, research manager at FE, shares his thoughts on three investment habits to pick up and fads to avoid in 2019

As 2018 draws to a close, we delve into FE’s leading investment research and analysis tool, FE Analytics, to take a look at the funds that have attracted the most adviser interest this year.

As everybody is getting into the festive spirit – we thought we’d use the 12 Days of Christmas song as inspiration to look at 12 ways FE has helped Advisers this year.  So why not grab a mince pie and scroll through our year in review...

2018 is drawing to a close so now is time to take a look back at the year gone by to see what facts and figures have emerged. In order for asset managers to better connect with advisers and understand their investment decisions, it’s crucial that we look at how advisers are behaving and why that may be.

The FE Invest Approved List has been expanded with the addition of 12 thematic funds covering seven sectors; financials, energy, commodities, consumer, technology, infrastructure and healthcare.

We asked Rob Botha, Head of Data at FE fundinfo, how we helped the European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA) to boost transparency.

ESMA’s SMSG – its own panel of advisers, made up of industry participants, consumers and academics – has published its advice to ESMA on the proposals in the PRIIPs Consultation Paper, JC 2018 60, and it doesn’t pull any punches.

Retirement planning used to be simple, an investor had a long period of accumulation which ended up with the buying of an annuity at retirement which provided a guaranteed income until death. Pension freedoms changed everything as investors are now much likely to enter drawdown in retirement.

A new international force in investment data has been created after FE, the investment data, research and software provider, joined forces with fundinfo, a provider of services for asset managers and distributors in Europe and Asia, and F2C, the Luxembourg-based business which runs fund data management platform, publiFund.

In the middle of the European Supervisory Authorities’ (ESAs) consultation on PRIIPs KIDs, there was cross-party agreement in the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON) that the target date for UCITS to publish PRIIPs KIDs should be extended by two years, from December 2019 to 2021.

A US fund Brown Advisory US Sustainable Growth has been added to the FE Invest Responsibly Managed Approved List for the first time at the latest rebalance. In total, seven funds have been added and two removed.

FE data reveals the 45 Investment Association (IA) funds that, over both one and three years, have given investors a fright by being the most volatile, with the added shock of delivering the worst performance figures.

There has been a high turnover (21.5%) of funds in the latest FE Invest Approved List rebalance, with sterling bond funds seeing the biggest churn. The changes are intended to help investors protect capital from unpredictable markets and increase portfolio diversification.

FE, the leading investment ratings, research and data provider, announced today that it is providing The European Fund Categorization Forum (EFCF) – a Task Force of the European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA) – with the Indicative Classification (IC) data for funds distributed in Germany and Switzerland.