We've spent the past few months switching our funds data provider and moving fund and ETF data onto the same platform as equity and investment trusts. The process isn't finished yet, but here's a guide to some of the changes.
■ Previously, full fund data was only available if the fund provider chose to pay for a price listing in the Financial Times' managed funds pages. Comprehensive data is now available on almost all funds available for sale in the UK (note that this universe includes many funds domiciled in other European countries but legally available for sale in the UK under Ucits III).
■ In most instances, we no longer list funds within life & pensions wrappers, as we felt this was very confusing for readers. It generated long lists of search results containing the same underlying fund in umpteen different wrappers.
■ We are now using fund data provided by Morningstar, a market leader in fund data, rather than IDC. Morningstar data is used extensively in our fund articles.
■ We now have vastly more data available on exchange traded funds (ETFs).
■ You can now add managed funds and ETFs to your portfolio just as you would shares - just click on the 'Add to portfolio' link on each fund tearsheet.
■ We've improved the fund data factsheets to incorporate more data and the new IC site identity. See this example.
Hints for using the funds data section:
■ If you want to search for a fund, don't use the main article search box. Go to Funds & ETFs > Find a fund and use the quick search there.
■ For the time being, investment trusts are still treated as equities rather than funds - so search for them under Shares > Find a share or using the main search box. We intend to put investment trusts under funds in due course.
■ You can search for a funds and ETFs by name, ISIN or TIDM. An ISIN is the alphanumeric code assigned to all investment instruments (for instance, Fidelity Special Situations has the code GB0003875100). The TIDM is the identifier for a stock-market traded vehicle like an ETF. For instance, the iShares UK All Stocks Gilt ETF is 'IGLT'. We use ISINs in all our fund profiles and tips. You can no longer search by Mexid, a less commonly used identifier.
What's coming up:
We've still got lots of development to do. In the coming months, we plan to:
■ Move investment trusts into funds, rather than equities
■ Link our hundreds of fund profiles and tips to the relevant fund data pages
■ Incorporate our 'IC Top 100' funds into the fund data
COMMENTS OR SUGGESTIONS?
Please leave any feedback about the new funds data below and we'll try and respond. Bear in mind that this is still 'work in progress' and there will be some bugs that need fixing!
visible-status-Standard story-url-NewFundsData.xml
