AJ Bell Investcentre has launched a new fund and ETF research and due diligence service for advisers to make the process more time-efficient.
The free service, Fundamentals, will provide advisers with detailed analysis of 77 funds and ETFs – 57 active and 20 passive – that have been selected by AJ Bell’s investment team using the same research process that the company currently uses for the AJ Bell Funds and Managed Portfolio Service.
Billy Mackay, marketing director, AJ Bell Investcentre, said: “Investment research is a core activity for many financial advisers and they will all have their own process and methodology ingrained within their businesses. But we know that they are always on the lookout for simple tools to help enhance their own approach or to reduce the time spent trawling through investment material.
“We’ve developed the Fundamentals tool to provide access to the investment research expertise we have within our business, so that advisers can benefit from the knowledge and information gathered from the many hours of meetings that the AJ Bell investment team holds with fund managers.”
Advisers will be able to use a filtering tool to quickly search for funds meeting specific criteria aligned with their clients’ needs. The filters include sector, active versus passive, fund size and ongoing charges figure (OCF). The selected funds are then displayed with their OCF and investment performance over the year to date, three years and five years, AJ Bell said.
Each fund has a short summary of why the AJ Bell investment team rates it as well as a full AJ Bell report, alongside the fund’s factsheet and Key Investor Information Document. Advisers can download the full report to aid their own due diligence process, with information on how the fund operates, its investment style, performance, split of assets and portfolio holdings as well as a snapshot view of key metrics such as its ISIN, sector, Morningstar rating, dividend yield and history, number of holdings and size.
AJ Bell will update its report on a quarterly basis, or more often if the AJ Bell team meets with a fund manager, it said.
