Fund centres have traditionally been provided as part of data and factsheet solutions. Expensive, not very pretty and specialist.
But a lot has changed in the last decade:
- investment firms have recognised the importance of data and improved their data infrastructure, either in-house or with trusted partners
- digital first customer experience has made it’s way to the top of the priority list and firms need seamless journeys and tight integration
- margin pressure means firms inspecting their cost bases and rightly identifying operational costs which don’t deliver value
- slow recognition that the asset & wealth management industry isn’t as different as people would like to believe
- and yes, AI
What does this mean for the evolution of fund centres? Glad you asked.
It means:
- fund centres can be simple front-end solutions that connect to existing data sources
- fund centres can be seamlessly embedded in websites and integrate with existing CMS platforms and portals
- fund centres don’t need to be expensive
- fund centres should be approached in the same way as retailers build ecommerce platforms
- fund centres can provide both a great human experience and agentic search & interaction
By building fund centres on the principles of a product catalogue/b2b ecommerce model, we simplify the model; funds, shareclasses, managers, price, performance – these are all simple elements of a catalogue.
And by building with MACH principles we commit to a single source(s) of data, an API to make data & content available anywhere and front end experiences that can be adapted to investor types, channels and technologies.
Hence our name; FundCommerce.