Discussions at the client reporting roundtable
For the 11th year, Osney Media staged its annual two-day Client Reporting and Servicing Conference. Here are some of the highlights of a conference that focused on client expectations and complex reporting
A better client experience is the goal of all asset management companies. With this in mind, industry experts are constantly trying to evaluate and improve their services, especially their client reporting, in order to help retain those valuable customers.
How do they do this? What are the challenges associated with client reporting and retaining clients? These, and many other questions, were the main talking points for this year’s 11th annual Client Reporting and Servicing for Investment Management Companies Conference, which took place November 14th and 15th at Le Meridian Hotel in Piccadilly Circus.
A long list of industry experts including Steve Delo of Close Investments Limited, the Co-operative’s Alan Murphy, Brian Reid of Standard Life Investments and Ian Richards from Legal & General Investment were among the headliners to take the podium and give keynote speeches at the conference. In addition to the many insightful presentations and panel discussions, the roundtable format livened the topics and sparked subject debate among the delegates.
For the third time, Peter Ellis, principal at Investit, was the chair for this year’s conference. Ellis was effective at engaging the audience after every presentation. The presenters offered unparalleled insight into an industry constantly looking for ways to reorganise and streamline.
DAY 1:
Steve Delo’s presentation on ‘Hard Habits to Break’ seemed to be a crowd pleaser as he discussed: what is a manager selector trying to achieve? With an imaginative production that was all wrapped into a theme involving song titles from the band Chicago, he also covered issues of performance analysis overload, qualitative overload, the dangers of data and explored the question of where do institutional investors go wrong?
“What I really wanted to do with the presentation is focus on what the needs should be, going back to basics to enable trustees of pension funds to actually take action in a positive way as opposed to doing something because it for the sake of it or because it sounds interesting,” said Delo. “I wanted to focus on what actually needs to be achieved and to go about that I had to debunk some of the mythology about reporting and some of the issues about performance numbers in particular which reporting often becomes being anchored on.”
Before Delo took the stage with his savvy, and often witty presentation, several other experts took the stage. The conference was kicked off by Marc Bautista of Lane Clark & Peacock, who gave a presentation on a somewhat controversial subject – consultants.
Obviously aware of the relationships between consultants and managers, Bautista examined how both sides could make the association work better. He talked about consultants as ‘gate keepers’ and how they are able to bring ideas and topical issues to the table, which is ultimately a value-add to the clients. The thesis of Bautista’s entire presentation covered the topics of what the consultants believe client reporting should consist of; examining whether consultants really wield the power to influence; and perspectives on gaining incremental business and approaching new business.
Greeted by a chilly reception – literally – Alan Murphy and Joanne Hope, pensions manager at the Aberdeen City Council, talked about pension funds on a local and corporate level respectively. Although the conference room was cold because of an air conditioning malfunction in the conference room at the Le Meridian, the atmosphere remained hot as Hope spoke frankly – and from a client’s point of view – about the frequency and the importance of timing, how are reports used and by whom, and reporting on alternatives, and where a client felt let down.
“I don’t think I said anything that people weren’t already aware of,” said Hope. “I don’t think [Murphy] disagreed with anything that I said. I think that his clients are suffering from the issues that the industry has. I spoke to one of the delegates the day before and he said ‘it’s nothing new to us. We know exactly what you are talking about, but the delivery of service is not the priority but other areas of the business are’. I fully agree that you have to invest in new systems but you have to remember that you have to deliver that to the client at the end of the day.”
Murphy carried the momentum by talking on many of the same subjects from a corporate pension manager’s point of view. Following these two presentations and Delo’s unique insight, a panel of speakers was given the subject of: How do you cope with increased complexity of reports?
Just prior to the lunch break, Ian Richards of Legal & General Investment Management talked passionately on adding value through excellence in client services. Within this subject matter, Richards spoke of the growing demand for interaction with the client and helping trustees manage the growing regulatory and scheme governance burden. Lastly, Richards discussed the importance of service.
Following the lunch break, Malcolm Gordon, director of institutional business at F & C Asset Management, talked about client reporting as a cross-selling tool. The main points he brought up were how you service the client in relation to your reporting and whether client reporting added value in the cross-selling process. Moreover, he made an interesting point of whether or not client reporting should become more ‘commercial’? His answer to this was: “absolutely”.
The most interactive portion of the afternoon came with the roundtable discussions. The question asked to the delegates was: “What were the five key challenges in client reporting and service?” As one can imagine, with so many different delegates from different organisations, there was enormous response. Some of the recurring themes brought to attention were:
· Who owns the content of the reporting?
· Who should get the final say on what is incorporated on the reports?
One heated topic at most tables was the pressure to report quicker and whether accuracy was suffering as a result. More challenges that came out as a result of the roundtable discussions were: bespoke reporting and finding a mechanism for determining the cost of reporting. Many other issues were brought up but these were the highlights.
The first day concluded with a presentation from Anant Barchha. The vice president, head of product management for performance and risk products, at BNY Mellon Corporation kept the audience’s attention by commenting on the role of custodians and whether they are meeting the needs of their clients. Following the presentation, Barchha, Monique Hamstra of Robeco Asset Management and Padraig Sheehy from KBC Asset Management Ltd held a panel discussion on why asset managers are developing all kinds of reporting tools if the custodian can do this on an individual and consolidated basis. The discussion explored the evolving relationship between fund managers, trustees, third-party administrators and investment consultants.
DAY 2:
The second day began differently from Day 1 by kicking off with a panel session led by Ian Barnett, European head of IMD Risk at Lehman Brothers, with chairman Ellis. The pair ignited a conversation on the challenges of reporting on complex derivatives strategies and structured products. As understanding derivatives is very important for today’s asset analysts, a subject everyone is trying to come to grips with, this was a very popular subject for discussion.
The vendor DeskNet and Brian Reid of Standard Life Investments sprang new life into the second day of the conference by offering the audience a case study. The supplier and investment management firm told the delegates about their automated client reporting platform. Reid spoke of the business challenges, deciding what to do about it, views for the problems and solutions, and project challenges. Because this was a case study, one of the key focus areas for Reid was to outline a vendor evaluation summary where he related what Standard Life looked for in a vendor. Among these qualities were:
· allowing the client to produce high quality documents with few template designs or document ‘engineering’ constraints;
· the ability to orchestrate the end-to-end process;
· to ability to make sense of the data already existing;
· giving the client high re-use of data and content across multiple report types; and
· automating the highly manual parts of the process.
Following another roundtable discussion, Paul Chavasse, chief operating officer of Rathbones Brothers, took to the podium and discussed the challenges facing wealth managers today and how to meet private clients’ needs. Chavasse talked of the demand for balancing the appropriate level of attribution and risk, plus client reporting for the private client wealth managers.
After lunch, online reporting was the first topic to greet the delegates. Always a very hot topic in the world of client reporting, Mike Ma, principal of Kasina evaluated online reporting and the benefits. Ma’s outline of the benefits included account dashboards, detailed account information and customised reporting.
Following this presentation, there was another panel session. This time, experts and delegates analysed whether outscourcing can provide a more effective solution for client reporting. The panellists included BNP Paribas Securities Services’ Jamie Stevenson, head of IRP UK, Peter Bambrough, lead consultant outscourcing at Citisoft and Jenny Norton of Investec. The panellists discussed many issues within the outsourcing umbrella, which included dealing with common stumbling blocks and how to measure performance of outsourced projects.
The two-day event was concluded with a presentation from Anthony Howland of Performa. Howland examined the current standardisation and regulation efforts in client investment reporting. More specifically, Howland talked of the initiatives going on within the industry with respect to investment reporting. Also, bridging the gap between reporting to prospective and current clients.
Overall, it was a productive, useful and sometimes controversial two days.
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