The new Wealth Shortlist has 68 funds with increased transparency and improved fund updates. Hargreaves Lansdown have also:
- Enhanced their selection criteria – focusing on performance potential, with key areas of their analysis homing in on managers, their processes and the culture of management companies.
- Introduced further risk monitoring and control – this includes analysis of additional data points and building further challenge into the investment process.
- Further enhanced governance and oversight – decisions about the funds they add to or remove from the Wealth Shortlist and decisions about their multi-manager funds are made by separate groups, and independently overseen by different committees.
- Included more guidance on how each fund could fit into a portfolio.
The savings on a fund’s ongoing charge are not a factor when deciding which funds make the list. Instead, discounts will be negotiated for all funds across the whole of the service and ensure fund charges are transparent for the benefit of clients. Charges are an important factor when choosing an investment, so Hargreaves Lansdown have added a new charges comparison to help clients see how funds compare to their peers. Initially this comparison is provided for the Wealth Shortlist, in due course it will be rolled out across the whole platform.
Emma Wall, Head of Investment Analysis, Hargreaves Lansdown, commented:
“We have taken our time to get this right. We have taken the time to better understand what clients want and we continually look to improve the service we offer. To do this, we have conducted extensive research and testing with our clients and listened to what they need and what is important to them, including reviewing our investment process and how we communicated with clients. The result is an evolution of the Wealth 50 to the Wealth Shortlist and Fund Finder which have our clients and their outcomes at the centre of our thinking.
“We have improved our transparency of research and process, the information, tools and support we provide clients, and the governance and risk controls of our processes and removed the fund price as a factor for fund selection. Our research notes are more in-depth for those clients who want more detail and they help clients understand how a fund may fit into a portfolio. We are also introducing a charges comparison to help investors who wish to use cost as a determining factor for investment.”
