News

UK fund providers will have until 15th September 2019 to submit a ‘Brexit licence’ to the Luxembourg regulator to continue trading in the jurisdiction.

With a recent article in the Financial Times (paywall), the debate around the management of the Woodford Equity Income Fund has broadened out to include the actions of the Authorised Corporate Director (ACD), a role very few outside the industry know anything about, but one that is very important nonetheless.

The European MiFID Template (EMT) has been used to transfer target market and costs and charges data from fund groups to distributors since January 2018. Having gone through a few iterations during development, the original version has not changed since it came into use over 18 months ago.

The outcomes from the FCA’s Asset Management Market Study (AMMS) are changing the ways fund groups work and even the way they are structured, all in the name of acting in investors’ best interests and delivering better outcomes for them.

The FCA published Policy Statement PS19/4 in February with further remedies for UK Authorised Fund Managers (AFMs) as a follow-up to its Asset Management Market Study (AMMS).

Last night, FE brought together over 250 members of the fund management industry at LSO St Luke’s to celebrate the 2019 FE Alpha Manager of the Year Awards. The ceremony was hosted by British favourite, Hugh Dennis, who presented 12 awards to this year’s best fund managers.

The Joint Committee of the three European regulators responsible for PRIIPs has just updated its Q&As and includes a detailed answer on how to arrive at the Recommended Holding Period (RHP) of a PRIIP.

Having selected 50 assorted MiFID II investment firms – D2C platforms, robo-advisers, DFMs and fund managers – the FCA looked at their understanding of the rules, where they might be falling short, how well costs and charges information is shared between groups and whether cost disclosure has improved the transparency of client communications.

The FE Alpha Managers make up the top 10 per cent of UK retail-facing managers based on their track record going back to the year 2000, with extra weighting for managers with the longest track records to highlight the benefits of experience.

Despite a lack of ability to do much at a local level about PRIIPs, the FCA issued a Call for Input (CfI) last year to ask for industry views on issues such as the scope of the PRIIPs Regulation and the calculation and presentation of risks, returns and costs on a KID.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

One of the few positive things that can be said about PRIIPs KIDs is that, unlike UCITS KIIDs, they don’t all need to be updated during the same short window at the start of every year. So PRIIPs providers can stagger their workload throughout the year, carrying out their annual reviews after their funds’ accounting dates, possibly.