The fund data decision that will shape your platform for years

Selecting a fund data provider will shape your platform's capability for years. The wrong choice forces teams to work around data gaps, compliance teams to chase missing documents, and technology teams to build manual workarounds. The right provider becomes invisible infrastructure that enables business growth.

Assess coverage against your actual product shelf

Total fund counts mean little without context. A provider covering 100,000 funds globally might offer limited depth across the multi-asset funds, investment trusts, and offshore bonds that represent your core product recommendations.

Map your current approved product list by asset class, wrapper type, and share class structure. Request coverage reports from prospective providers to verify coverage claims against your actual requirements rather than accepting headline numbers.

Consider both breadth and data quality. Breadth means covering the fund ranges your Advisors recommend. Data quality means asking how current that data really is, because coverage alone isn’t enough if key fund information hasn’t been updated recently and can’t support confident adviser decisions.

Evaluate share class granularity

Different share classes serve different client types across different wrapper structures. Your platform serves retail clients in ISAs, pension transfer clients in SIPPs, and discretionary clients across multiple account types.

If your provider only covers retail share classes, you lack the institutional share class data needed for larger portfolios. If they exclude rebated share classes, your advisers can't accurately calculate total costs. Verify that prospective providers cover the specific share class variants your business uses, not just the headline fund names.

Verify regulatory documentation coverage

Your compliance obligations extend beyond performance data. Advisers must access current prospectuses, KIIDs, annual reports, and supplementary regulatory documents before making recommendations.

Evaluate what documentation each provider includes as standard and what requires additional arrangements. Assess coverage across the jurisdictions where your approved products are domiciled. Confirm how quickly regulatory updates flow through to your platform after publication.

Understand data quality and validation

Data accuracy determines adviser confidence. A single pricing error can trigger suitability reviews across multiple client portfolios.

Ask prospective providers how they populate their fund universe. Do they source directly from fund administrators and asset managers, or aggregate data from multiple third-party sources? First-party data relationships where the provider works directly with asset managers and fund administrators - typically deliver higher accuracy than providers who aggregate information second-hand. You should also ask how your provider would go about identifying and plugging any coverage gaps that may crop up in the future.

Assess update frequency and timeliness

Fund data changes constantly. New share classes launch with lower costs. Existing classes close to new investors. Rating changes influence recommendations.

Your provider must update their universe quickly enough to support your workflows without creating compliance gaps. Advisers who discover platform data is outdated resort to external sources, undermining your investment in integrated technology. You should also ask how fund request lists can be submitted for example via FTP or API and what interfaces are available for fund lookup when considering adding a new fund to your list.

Plan for business evolution

Your distribution strategy will evolve. Platforms adding model portfolios need consistent multi-asset fund coverage. Firms expanding into retirement income need comprehensive annuity and drawdown fund data.

Evaluate whether prospective providers can support your organisation’s evolution without introducing new commercial barriers for each additional use case. A provider that meets your current needs but charges separately as new teams or functions require access to the same data can quickly create unexpected cost, complexity and internal friction often resulting in a future migration project that firms underestimate in both disruption and effort.

Conduct a structured evaluation

Start with requirements, not provider demonstrations. Document your current approved product list, identify where advisers use external sources to compensate for platform data gaps, and map your strategic product priorities.

How FE fundinfo supports distributor requirements

FE fundinfo covers 75+ jurisdictions with particular depth across UK, European and offshore fund ranges that UK distributors rely upon. We process 7 million data points daily and 1.5 million documents monthly, supporting over 4,200 firms including 3,900+ UK advice practices. Our infrastructure covers over 100,000 active funds with comprehensive share class detail across wrapper types.

Our position at the heart of the investment product lifecycle means we create and file regulatory documents on behalf of asset managers. We produce over 550,000 regulatory documents annually, ensuring distributors access the same authoritative information that regulators receive. This first-party data relationship delivers the accuracy and timeliness that second-hand aggregators cannot match.

As your distribution strategy evolves—whether adding DFMs, expanding platform capabilities, or pursuing new client segments—our coverage expands with you without new integration projects for each product category. Our operational scale provides the resilience that critical infrastructure demands, backed by ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certifications.

Ready to evaluate whether your fund data provider supports your distribution ambitions? Contact us to discuss your specific platform requirements.