A growing number of investors are choosing to take their activities online in a move to better manage their assets by having an electronic record of their transactions and investments. It’s fast, cheap and efficient.
And it’s a fact not lost on asset management firms.
Established in 1974, Allan Gray claims it is the largest privately owned investment management company in Southern Africa. Its clients comprise institutional investors, principally retirement funds, medical aid schemes and endowments and individuals. Its clients invest through either segregated accounts or collective investment funds.
The company has a new, secure website that is attracting more than 250 visitors a day and more than 400 new users a month. Initially aimed at making investment reporting accessible and immediate, Johan de Lange, a director at Allan Gray Investor Services, says the intention is to make the site fully transactional in the future. It forms part of a move to maintain and improve service levels for investors and their advisers.
He says: “As the business has grown we have taken a series of strategic steps to exert more control over the level and quality of service experienced by investors and to ensure the way that service is delivered meets investor needs.”
He quotes studies that highlight the need for effective client service. These show that companies lose clients not necessarily because competitors win them, but mainly through indifference or poor attitude or unsatisfactory handling of complaints.
“This means having queries dealt with by someone who properly identifies you and the nature of your query, questions appropriately, checks the details to eliminate any potential confusion, provides related information and accurate paperwork and offers further services for follow-ups, while always being responsive.”
De Lange says the company has installed a new administrative software system already and has brought client administration in-house and linked it more closely to the client service team. The subsequent trebling of investor accounts and call volumes has given rise to looking at new ways to manage the challenges of this growth and to ensure that the group maintains high standards.
“This has resulted in a number of internal actions to improve processes, accuracy where human intervention is necessary and a focus on areas of client service and administration where we believe we may enhance investor experience and build long-term capacity.”
Both investors and financial advisers can access Allan Gray Online. Investors can access investment reports online as and when it suits them. It provides confidential and controlled access to investment information and offers the flexibility to view investment information online, download, print or email it as required. It is updated daily with the previous night’s prices.
For financial advisers the online service provides immediate access to information that relates to their business. De Lange says this includes the ability to view assets under administration by product, fund, client and management company. It also provides access to their client and fee statements.
He says if the most common investment mistake is investing in assets that are overpriced, the second most common mistake is staying away from those that offer value. Mostly investors have managed to avoid the first mistake in the past three years, but not the second.
Since 2003 equity returns have amounted to an annualised three-year compound return of 36% (to end of September 2006). Surprisingly, investors have been relatively cautious about local shares, particularly in the second half of last year.
Normally market peaks are characterised by strong flows into equity unit trusts. But in the past three years 95% of net flows have been cautious or conservative, with 27% of flows going into asset allocation funds, 42% into fixed interest funds and 26% into money market funds.
Says De Lange: “We’ve been advocating caution as many shares have appreciated to the point of being overpriced; and with the market continuing to perform at record highs, we believe investors should continue to adopt a cautious approach going forward.”
If local equities are overpriced, where can value be found? Offshore, says De Lange. “We still hold the view that the rand is likely to depreciate in coming years and that in general both fixed interest and equity investments in South Africa are expensive relative to alternatives available internationally.”
This view is not unusual among local fund managers, but apparently investors are not persuaded.
While there were small net inflows into offshore funds during 2005 and 2006, this came after three years of negative inflows in 2002, 2003 and 2004, amounting to an aggregate of R2,2-billion of withdrawals from offshore funds in the past five years.
“This trend needs to turn around – investors are not taking advantage of the value being offered internationally,” De Lange says.
Unit trust assets under management have nearly trebled in the past five years, from R174 588-million in December 2001 to R496,425 at the end of September 2006. While investment returns have had a significant impact on this growth, especially in the past three years, the bulk of it has been driven by strong net inflows.
Looking forward, De Lange believes there is substantial room still for collective investments to grow at the expense of other savings vehicles and analysts agree the main beneficiary of net inflows in the coming decade will be unit trusts.
“Unit trusts offer the transparency and flexibility that investors want. Now all they have to is continue to avoid the mistake of putting all their investment eggs into expensive assets and focus more on investing in assets that offer relative value,” he says.