RETHINKING DISTRIBUTION

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Increasing use of technology to reach investors

Growing impact of social media

The development of mobile technology and the emergence of social media offers individual investors innovative ways to access and scrutinise the investment fund industry. It also represents a new challenge for fund promoters who are now required to evolve their marketing strategy to be visible on these new communication channels.

Social networking has become a major trend for both personal and professional purposes. Social networks allowpeople to share information, opinions and even recommendations on all types of topics.While the phenomenon is already widespread inmany countries (see figure 13), is there really a strong impact on the fund management industry to be expected from social media?

The emergence of mobile technology

The greater use of mobile technology has spurred the development of applications tailored to the asset management business. As shown in figure 12, the number of active users of mobile banking and related services is expected tomultiply by 16 by 2015 (close to one billion people). Distributors on the front line have started providing their clients and prospects with real time accessible applications to track their fund performances and to carry out subscription and redemption operations. For instance, in the UK, one of the biggest fund distributors is already proposing an application on iPhone allowing their clients to get information regarding fund price, performance and management fee on a range of more than 1,000 funds. Clients also have the opportunity to invest through the fund platform.

Figure 12

Number of active users of mobile banking and related services, forecast (in millions)

1000

894

750

500

250

55

0

2009

2015

Source : fst

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