Corporate Insight is proud to unveil our fifteenth annual Mutual Fund Monitor – Advisor Awards, offering a broad benchmarking of the advisor websites across six key categories: Advisor Homepages, Literature Order Systems, Practice Management Resources, Multimedia, Commentaries & Thought Leadership and New or Improved Tools. As in past years, we assign the Gold Medal to firms that present exceptional offerings within given categories. We award a Silver Medal for firms that offer similar value but lack some of the outstanding attributes and functions of the best offerings. We give the Bronze Medal to firms that offer a unique or noteworthy iteration but do not meet our highest standards for a given category

1. Advisor Monitor
2016 Gold Medal Winners

2. Corporate Insight provides competitive intelligence, consulting and user experience research to the nation's
leading financial, health and education institutions. For more than two decades, the firm has tracked technological
developments in the end-user online experience, identifying best practices in online financial services and
investing, mobile finance, social media and other emerging areas. Corporate Insight offers subscription-based
Monitor services in 14 verticals, including banking, healthcare and alumni relations, along with custom research,
digital capabilities audits, special studies, user research and other consulting services. The firm helps its clients—
including 70% of the financial services firms in the Fortune 500—to remain at the forefront of industry trends and
improve their competitive position.
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3. Corporate Insight is proud to unveil our fifteenth annual Mutual Fund Monitor – Advisor Awards, offering a broad
benchmarking of the advisor websites across six key categories: Advisor Homepages, Literature Order Systems,
Practice Management Resources, Multimedia, Commentaries & Thought Leadership and New or Improved Tools.
As in past years, we assign the Gold Medal to firms that present exceptional offerings within given categories. We
award a Silver Medal for firms that offer similar value but lack some of the outstanding attributes and functions of
the best offerings. We give the Bronze Medal to firms that offer a unique or noteworthy iteration but do not meet
our highest standards for a given category. Changes to rankings and awarded medals from previous iterations of
the same category were predominantly influenced by this year’s site revamps. Additionally, adjustments were made
to grading criteria weights in order to reflect current industry best practices. This year, Vanguard was added to our
lineup of coverage group firms, which also impacted grading and rankings across all categories.
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4. Category Overview
Promote Your Firm’s 2016 Monitor Awards!
Corporate Insight is happy to assist all award-winning firms in promoting their honors. For more
information and for examples of past promotions, contact us at pr@corporateinsight.com.
Advisor Homepages
Literature Order Systems
Practice Management
Resources
Multimedia
Commentaries &
Thought Leadership
New or
Improved Tools

5. Medal Chart
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6. Advisor homepages are a portal to main site areas and a key space to promote funds, services and commentary.
This category evaluates the different ways firms promote their content as well as how homepages are designed
and organized. Promotions for products and commentary were critical grading points. More favorable grades were
assigned to advisor homepages with customizable sections, such as watch lists or favorite document capabilities.
Personalization of homepage content, including targeted commentary and the availability of wholesaler contact
information, also beneficially impacted firms’ rankings.
Advisor Homepages
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Fidelity retains its gold medal for the advisor
homepage. The well-designed page employs
responsive design and includes a customizable
watchlist and favorite documents section. In addition
to customizable sections for tracking favorite products
and files, the firm uses personalization to suggest
targeted content to the end user, creating a more
tailored experience than any other coverage group
firm.
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7. Literature Order Systems
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This category highlights best practices for the document-ordering experience provided through each firm’s
literature center. Efficient literature centers provide advisors with ample client-ready materials, brochures, forms,
PDFs and fund documents. For comparative grading within this category, we examined the ease of access, depth of
item descriptions available for ordering, availability of browse and search capabilities, shopping cart technology and
order tracking options. We favor firms with features like prominently viewable carts, detailed document
descriptions, dynamic navigation controls with powerful search options and useful filters to pare down results.
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Franklin Templeton maintains a long-standing position
in the gold slot for its literature center. Noteworthy
features that have kept the literature center in the top
spot include its ease of findabilty, a generous selection
of filter and search options, detailed item descriptions
and a user-friendly, prominent shopping cart. The firm
is one of few to offer a search bar with a predictive
search capability in its literature center.

8. Practice Management Resources
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This category benchmarks the materials that firms provide to help advisors build their business, nurture client
relationships and manage daily operations. This ranges from tips on prospecting to advice on how to leverage
technology. We evaluate several aspects of practice management resources, including presentation and
organization, the types of content available and the breadth of topics covered. We favored firms that offer
resources on pressing issues impacting the advisory space, such as the Department of Labor’s fiduciary ruling or
heir retention.
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Hartford Funds retains the gold medal for its practice
management resources. This year, the firm revamped
the layout and presentation of its Practice
Management section and added four new topics to its
lineup. A key strength in this category is the wide range
of formats, which includes audio clips, videos, webinar
replays, white papers, worksheets and workbooks,
slide decks and how-to guides.

9. Multimedia
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This category explores how firms use multimedia to enhance the advisor experience. Our review assessed the
availability and quality of audio and video resources. We also explored the quality of webinars and the presentation
of replays. Medal winners did not necessarily need to be strong in all three formats of multimedia. Attributes such
as location, presentation and design, scope and relevancy of topics were most important in the grading process.
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Fidelity earns the gold medal for its multimedia
resources, which include a robust video center and a
selection of timely conference calls and webinars.
Within this category, Fidelity is strongest in terms of its
video content. Around one to four new clips are
uploaded each week. All new multimedia resources are
prominently promoted on the homepage upon their
release.

10. Commentaries & Thought Leadership
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Commentaries and thought leadership help advisors interpret how events impact different asset classes. Fund
firms can achieve true differentiation from their competitors by providing advisors with information that they can
use toward making informed decisions for their clients. This category assesses the resources firms offer to help
keep advisors in tune with critical market and economic events. These resources are ideally released on a
consistent schedule and cover the most relevant topics to the investing landscape.
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J.P. Morgan earns the gold for its range of commentary
and thought leadership materials. The firm’s revamp in
February improved the organizational structure of
commentary and thought leadership resources. The
firm offers several recurring series that provide
advisors with a persistent stream of information to
keep them informed. Resources in this category come
in a wide variety of formats, including HTML articles,
slide decks, PDFs, videos and audio.

11. New or Improved Tools
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This category evaluates all tools or calculators that were released or significantly enhanced since our last awards
report. We considered every tool across all financial planning purposes (e.g., portfolio construction, market
tracking, comparing investments). Usefulness to advisors in their day-to-day practice and quality of results were the
most critical factors in gaining a medal. Tools that let advisors create customized, client-ready reports received
additional points.
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The American Funds Target Date ProView tool earns
this year’s gold medal. The retirement-focused tool is
marketed as a source for advisors seeking to keep in
line with compliance standards. The tool lets advisors
compare and contrast up to four different target date
funds at a time from both in-house and select
competitor fund families. Advisors can also generate a
customized, client-approved PDF report of their results.

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Senior Analyst
Advisor Monitor and Mutual Fund Monitor
646-929-5158
efazekas@corporateinsight.com
Erika Fazekas
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