"In the future, clients will focus on control tasks when it comes to disclosure management."

Fact Focus: Heiner, what goals are you pursuing with the Best Practice Toolkit?

Heiner Brauers: Fin RP is a highly specialised and very powerful tool. We want our new customers to get print-ready reports as quickly as possible. The Best Practice Toolkit has everything you need for this.

Fact Focus: Your clients will certainly have produced reports in the past and therefore have a concrete idea of how their publications should look.

Heiner Brauers: Exactly, and that’s why we ask them to complete our design questionnaire about the basic design and text settings in advance and enter these into Fin RP.

Fact Focus: What’s left for the customer to do?

Heiner Brauers: The customer still has all control over all the processes, but the tasks are changing. The focus is no longer on diligence tasks such as collecting data, entering data and ticking off results, but much more on control and management tasks within the framework of genuine disclosure “management”.

Fact Focus: So you lessen the burden on the customers?

Heiner Brauers: Absolutely! Through the higher degree of automation. And we provide freedom to focus on such things as quality assurance and new regulatory requirements. In my experience, this is an aspect of central importance, particularly in such a dynamic environment. Consider the current developments in ESG reporting, for example.

Fact Focus: And what happens once the system is set up and the data is imported more or less automatically via import scripts?

Heiner Brauers: Many customers then also want to use Fin RP for reports in which they hadn’t invested all that much effort in the past because the effort seemed too great. Like with special funds, for example, where the readership is much smaller compared to mutual funds. But with Fin RP, glossy reports can be produced in no time at all. We see this as a real opportunity for asset managers to be perceived by their clients as more professional than their competitors.

Fact Focus: The concept of best practices does not refer just to the operation of software, but also to the design of the processes around it.

Heiner Brauers: Absolutely, and we advise our clients and can share valuable experiences with them about this aspect as well. For example, with regard to the question of who should bring the data into the system. A central department or the relevant specialist departments, which are granted access to Fin RP for this purpose? How can external service providers be optimally integrated? Or the question of how to organise the communication between all those involved. Exploiting the possibilities of Fin RP makes it possible to operate much more efficiently than was perhaps the case in the past. Overall, there is enormous potential there.

Fact Focus: Heiner, thank you for the interview.