For immediate release: Thursday 17 March 2005

FINANCIAL EXPRESS AND IMA DRIVING ONLINE FUND PRICE LISTINGS
IN WAKE OF LATEST FSA RULING

Online fund price listings, a joint initiative between Financial Express and the Investment Management Association (IMA), is gaining support among fund providers since the FSA announced that fund prices no longer require publication in a national newspaper. The new CIS Sourcebook/COLL1 rules apply from 1st April 2005.

The free service is available at www.fundlistings.com and via the new IMA website, www.investmentuk.org, and via the independent distribution of the service through third party websites, including The London Stock Exchange, The Insurance Trading Exchange, and a variety of financial portals, personal finance websites and printed publications’ websites.

Online fund price listings means that more people will have free, unlimited access to daily fund prices, plus a range of additional data and charts.

The service enables fund management groups to fulfil their obligations under the new CIS Sourcebook/COLL1 rules, which make it possible for them to publish their prices in the most “appropriate manner”, and at the same time reach their investors more effectively.

Michael Holland, Financial Express Managing Director commented:

“As the fund sector’s main data and technology provider, Financial Express is well placed to drive daily fund prices online with the IMA. However, we do not believe that this service will replace the newspaper listings for all fund providers as there are needs and preferences for both media. The industry must be pragmatic and acknowledge that some investors will prefer the timeliness, accessibility and interactivity that online delivery of prices will offer.”

Richard Saunders, Chief Executive of the IMA commented:

“Fund prices are a vital part of the investing process. The service offered by Financial Express and IMA is an easy to use one-stop shop for price and performance data and is an interactive and welcome alternative to newspapers.”

-Ends-

For further information, please contact:
Paul Wynne, Head of Marketing & Communication, Financial Express, 020 7534 3355 or 07887 765 458
Helen Stephenson, Communications Officer, IMA, 020 7831 0898

 
Notes to Editors:

1. Following the FSA policy statement to CP185, the COLL sourcebook implemented in April 2004 outlines that funds operating under the new rules could publish prices in an “appropriate manner” rather than there being a prescriptive requirement to publish prices in a national newspaper. This rule has now been extended for all funds. Acceptable means of publishing includes publication on the internet.

2. About Online Daily Fund Price Listings (www.fundlistings.com)
The service provides the latest daily fund price information for more than 38,000 UK unit trusts and OEICs, life insurance funds (open and closed issues), pension funds (open and closed issues), FSA recognised offshore funds and other offshore funds.

The data available includes:     

• Buy and sell/NAV prices
• Yield
• Initial charge
• Percentage change from previous day
• 1 year total return performance charts
• 1, 3 and 5 years, and since launch, standard performance data
• 1, 3 and 5 years, and since launch, discrete performance data

Investors can explore the service by:

• scrolling through the listings or searching by fund manager
• using the ‘change format’ option to extend the listings on each page and reduce the number of pages to scroll through
• loading multiple charts on one page by clicking on the individual fund names
• move and reposition the charts around the page for easy, side-by-side viewing, by clicking, holding and dragging the chart with the ‘move’ button.

3. Financial Express was formed in 1996 and is the main provider of fund data and technology solutions to the financial sector. Financial Express collects all fund prices in the UK, as well as offshore fund prices, and is relied upon as the sole or main source of this data by data vendors, fund supermarkets, financial websites and IFAs. Financial Express also provides the price and performance tables, and factsheets, for the IMA website.

4. The Investment Management Association is the trade body representing the UK asset management industry, representing £2 trillion funds under management and over 99% of the UK investment funds industry (unit trusts and OEICs).