Confluence Tool Reduces Shareholder Report Creation Time Up to 99%

Confluence has launched a cloud-based tool, Unity Publishing, that eliminates typesetting and publishes shareholder reports, which can reduce the time for fund administrators to create a stylized draft by 99% for funds across the world, including UCITS funds.

The publishing system pulls in data from Confluence’s Unity platform, which supports a range of solutions that compile data from the disparate systems of a back office (though the company is looking at possibilities for leveraging data from another product for clients without the Unity platform). Clients can then review the data, and the publishing tool then uses templates to automatically typeset shareholder reports, creating print-ready PDFs and sending filings to the appropriate regulatory bodies. Unity Publishing also has audit trail capabilities to track changes among current and previous PDF versions.

Because the content stays within the system throughout the publishing process, administrators avoid the risk of sending the data out to a typesetter to manually stylize the report.

“The typesetter, when they’re moving text around on a page, can change a 4.69 to a 4.63, for example, or move data from one column in a table to another. So the fund administrator now has to go back and check every page of these annual reports. When they keep the data in the system, the system does all the checking,” says Skip Smith, chief operating officer at Confluence.

For asset manager Russell Investments, Confluence’s first client for the tool, the solution reduced the time to create their most complicated report from 72 hours down to 30 minutes. For subsequent drafts, which Confluence says typically take 24 hours, using the tool reduced this process down to minutes for Russell.

“We just completed our most demanding reporting cycle of the year using Unity Publishing,” says Rick Chase, director of fund administration for Russell Investments. “We were able to cut the typesetting effort required to put out two Annual Reports by an estimated 25 percent, and cut related costs for our clients by 20 percent. Since typesetting has been eliminated from the process, we have more control over output and more time to focus on high-quality content. Third-party editors can no longer accidentally change data that must then be re-reviewed line by line. This has vastly reduced our potential risks that arise from a more manual environment and increased our efficiency.”

Aside from signing on Russell in the U.S., Confluence says that it is has already closed a deal with a client in Canada and is close to closing others in Europe.

“The real advantage of the software is a trifecta: they get the increased control by the fact that the data is in the system, so no one is manually changing it; they get increased speed—they were used to 72 hours and now get it in 30 minutes; they get it at reduced costs because the software is much less than a per hour charge for a person doing the layout,” says Smith.

The costs for using the software are negotiated based on the fund.