When Toby Cole, head of Henderson’s UK broker desk, subscribed to FE Analytics to support his sales team, it was an easy decision to take: most of the team’s IFA clients and prospects were already using FE Analytics; the feedback was that it was a great tool; and the assumption from IFAs was that ‘naturally’ Henderson would be using it too. So it was really a question of ‘why wouldn’t we subscribe’ rather than ‘why would we’.
The solution
As head of the UK broker desk, Toby Cole manages a core team of sales people responsible for developing and nurturing relationships with independent financial advisers (IFAs) on a discretionary or advisory basis.
To begin this process, businesses which are already in the ‘sales funnel’ need to be further ‘refined’ to identify real opportunities for Henderson’s funds. This means analysing how these businesses are performing comparative to their sector and region - and against the market as a whole. It also means focussing on the 20 or so Henderson funds that are the best performing at any one point in time – and therefore the focus of the sales effort – and identifying where these products are out-performing incumbent funds, or compare favourably to the market as a whole, so offering an attractive proposition.
FE Analytics can demonstrate to both new and existing clients a fund’s suitability for and performance within their portfolio. It also enables the sales team to carry out competitor analysis to strengthen their proposition. The tool can be used for forward analysis and performance comparisons to model the IFA’s current investment situation against an optimised proposition, and then create fund and portfolio comparison reports to demonstrate the value of that proposition against the existing investments.
“We are using FE Analytics to explain the strengths of our investment propositions to IFAs. Importantly, by using FE Analytics to chart the impact of portfolios, they trust the information that they are seeing, as we are using a tool that they use themselves,” says Toby.
It delivers this capability using the latest, web-based technology and a totally intuitive user interface. And it’s both quick and easy to get up and running on FE Analytics: you simply take out a subscription and log on.
“A totally painless process,” according to Toby, who appreciates the support he receives from the FE fundinfo team generally, and account manager Deborah Oliver in particular.
So Toby’s sales team were up to speed in no time at all; in fact, they took the initiative in driving its use – always a reassuring sign that a new product or service is adding real value.
“It’s so easy to use,” says Toby. “I can run a performance graph really quickly, ‘ping’ it into a PDF and get it out straight away.”