1. Innovative approaches to reducing risk and accelerating time-to-market.
KEYSTONEA best practice guide from Objective Corporation
TRANSFORMING DISCLOSURE
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D D M M Y Y Y Y

2. © Objective Corporation
Product Managers need more efficient ways to manage
the process of updating, reviewing and verifying disclosure
related content; but more than that, their contribution in
terms of intellectual property is often “lost in translation"
along the process to publication.
Risk and Governance Officers face a constant battle to
ensure disclosed information is accurate and non-
misleading, in an environment requiring rapid turnaround as
a result of compliance changes and product updates
Marketing Teams need to ensure the quality of the output,
in an environment where multiple brands and client specific
customisations apply to similar common content.
By incorporating proven techniques - enabled by highly
intuitive software, designed to address the core challenges
faced by these stakeholders - organisations are already
realising significant benefits.
In this best practice guide we will consider seven
innovative approaches taken by leading financial
services organisations to increase process
efficiency and deliver products to market in
“internet time”, whilst at the same time
significantly reducing the risk associated with
traditional product disclosure activities.
Results from our customers demonstrate a minimum 40%
reduction in the time taken to complete a product roll using
these approaches - increasing exponentially as the number
of portfolio documents or variants of those documents
increases.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Financial Services organisations operate in a complex
environment.
Constantly evolving regulatory requirements impact heavily
on both process optimisation initiatives but also key business
outcomes (such as time to market and product profitability).
Whilst many organisations accept the status quo as a simple
“cost of business”, others are seizing the opportunity offered
by digital transformation initiatives to fundamentally re-think
how outcomes are achieved.
Mature organisations are taking a holistic approach
to transforming traditional Product Disclosure
processes to better align with customer centric
delivery models and, at the same time, achieve
streamlined portfolio management, delivering
significant reductions in cost and risk.
Customer Communication Management initiatives are
delivering on the promise of mass personalisation.
“it’s now becoming a standard consumer expectation that
products and communication should be tailored to their
individual needs and this will simply be best practice for
brands who want to efficiently engage with their
customers”.1
However, efficiently delivering on customer centric initiatives
requires transformation to occur “from the inside out”.
The entire Product Portfolio definition, description, disclosure,
personalisation and delivery processes need to be effectively
“joined up” to fully address all stakeholders needs.
“While most financial services organisations use
technology widely to encourage customer
interaction through channels such as online
banking and apps, few have yet invested in
complete, end-to-end digital systems and
processes.
At the same time, these businesses know that, if
they are to keep pace, they must continuously
innovate to improve process efficiency, cut costs
and encourage internal fluidity by adopting
advanced technology and frameworks”.
Jens Lundgaard, The Digital Dawn in Banking,
August 2015.
1. Customisation is Going Mainstream, Mind Share, 2014

3. © Objective Corporation
STATUS QUO In most organisations today, the product disclosure process (print and digital) is highly manual in nature, multifaceted, and spans
multiple siloed departments. Authors and Reviewers, both internal and external, use tools that are not fit for purpose. Apart from
the obvious time-to-market challenge when updating products, such an approach makes meeting organisational compliance
requirements inherently risky.
ID
CMS
1
Product Manager emails PDS draft to
SMEs and creates compliance
spreadsheet
3
Product Manager consolidates changes
to Master document and updates
spreadsheet.
2
SMEs update draft creating multiple
additional Word documents
4
Product Manager distributes to
Legal and Due Diligence Committee
to review. They add advice and Risk
information respectively.
6
Authorising individual signs final PDS
and creates Verification Certificate.
8
Marketing engage design resources
to create web content and multiple
versions of disclosure documents
based on RE branding and client
specific information.
7
Product Manager sends verified
content to Marketing for creation of
on-brand disclosure documents and
website related campaigns.
5
Product Manager incorporates advice
and other information into “final” PDS
document.
TYPICALLY 3 MONTHS

4. © Objective Corporation
KEY DOCUMENTS The disclosure challenge is, of course, not limited to the traditional printed Product Disclosure Statement. Additional Information
Booklets (AIBs), Statements of Advice (SOA), Information memorandums, Prospectuses, Incorporated Material, Fact Sheets,
Investor Information Documents, Performance Dashboards and Application Forms all fall under varying disclosure legislation.
In addition, the introduction of innovative “digital disclosure” techniques through digital channels will only
exasperate the existing challenges around time to market, risk management and compliance.
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5. © Objective Corporation
KEY STAKEHOLDERS As with any transformation initiative, the key to success is to focus on the stakeholders involved and the challenges they face.
Only then is it possible to identify key aspects of the process that can be fundamentally transformed to deliver on the desired
outcomes of efficiency, compliance, managed risk and time to market.
PRODUCT MANAGERS &
SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS
Product Managers work with Subject
Matter Experts to consolidate core
Intellectual Property into marketable
offerings based on key market
differentiators.
Too often, Product Managers become
Project Managers, facilitating and managing
the path to completion for a given product
roll using antiquated technology like
spreadsheets, “track changes”, and emails.
In addition, Product Managers and Subject
Matter Experts spend valuable time
rehashing existing common content resulting
in inconsistent wording (and potentially,
messaging) between products.
There are multiple stakeholders involved
in the Review-Verify-Approve process.
Each with subtly different needs but all
fundamentally important to the process
of verification.
Key to the success of these stakeholders is
the knowledge that they are acting on the
very latest content; that they are not having
to review on the same sections over and
over again in different documents,variants of
document or digital assets; and that the
entire process is properly and appropriately
auditable.
Last minute changes impact massively on
time to market and thus mechanisms to
minimise stakeholder rework are key.
Traditionally, the marketing team suffer
most from delays to the verification
process or last minute changes to
content. It is they that work the long
hours at roll time.
Supporting numerous variants of documents
with different branding, differing contextual
information and differing rules affecting fee
structures and the like result in a painful
process of delivering high quality, on-brand
and accurate documents and other
collateral.
Add in external design agencies and the
upcoming move towards innovative digital
disclosure and the challenges (and need for
new approaches) multiply.
COLLABORATE
RISK & GOVERNANCE
MANAGERS
MARKETING &
COMMS MANAGERS
VERIFY PUBLISH

6. © Objective Corporation
VERIFICATION
CERTIFICATION
Organisations are able to effectively manage all aspects of the roll process, from handling multiple versions of content (down to the paragraph, cell level), to
tracking all comments; from mechanisms to properly consider review and advice, to fully auditing everything that happens in a roll process.
Mature and centralised processes and technology deliver confidence that compliance obligations have been met.
WHITE
LABELLING
Organisations are able to increase efficiency and lower risk through white-labelling of offerings and automated production of on-brand document variants for
corporate sub-brands, corporate clients or for wholesaling to boutique clients by Responsible Entities for hire.
White labelling solves the challenge of producing on-brand product variants without the need to independently update, review and
verify multiple similar disclosure assets.
COMMON
CONTENT
Organisations are able to significantly increase efficiency and substantially lower risk by taking an holistic approach to the management of common
organisation or portfolio content elements (or clauses).
This reduces the time to market for new and updated products by eliminating the need to independently update, review and verify the
same content across multiple documents.
TRANSFORMATION Our work with numerous financial service clients has highlighted seven key strategic areas for transformation within the product
roll process. These approaches apply equally well to traditional print documents (PDS, AIB, SOAs, Application Forms,
Performance Reports) as well as to emerging, innovative forms of disclosure (showreels, videos and dynamic online content
delivery in support of customer journey initiatives.
ROLL
AUTOMATION
Organisations are able to increase efficiency and reduce the pain of the roll process by automating and tracking the assignment of tasks to stakeholders,
allowing subject matter experts to author disclosure content in parallel, and by providing the roll manager with an end to end view of the entire process.
This dramatically reduces the time to market for, and the pain associated with producing, new and updated products.
ONE-CLICK
PUBLISHING
Organisations are able to de-couple the design and branding of print and digital collateral from the content verification process. They are also able to easily
produce hundreds of variants of print ready, downloadable or innovative digital disclosure artefacts (across multiple brands), based on a pre-configured
flow based publishing engine, using content sourced directly from a single repository of information.
One-click publishing dramatically reduces the time taken to revision collateral based on roll updates or last minute content changes.
MASTER
SHELL
Organisations are able to manage the increasing volume of product disclosures across the portfolio by adopting a Master Shell approach where disclosure
content is authored, updated and verified once only for all products, and specific product variations (including branding) are managed using conditional rules
and variable metadata.
This significantly improves time to market of the entire product portfolio.
DATA
INTEGRATION
Organisations are able to utilise data from line of business systems either as content within disclosure collateral (e.g. performance data) or to control
conditional content in that collateral.
Data synchronisation minimises the risk of human error in re-using data from existing line of business systems.

7. © Objective Corporation
PERFECT PRODUCT
PDS
ROLL AUTOMATION Organisations are able to increase efficiency and reduce the pain of the roll process by automating and tracking the assignment
of tasks to stakeholders, allowing subject matter experts to author document sections in parallel, and by providing the roll
manager, and other key stakeholders, with an end to end view of the entire process.
This dramatically reduces the time to market for, and the pain associated with producing, new and updated
products.
SECTION A
SUBJECT MATTER
EXPERTS
SECTION A
STAKEHOLDERS
SECTION B
SUBJECT MATTER
EXPERTS
SECTION B
STAKEHOLDERS
Roll Managers no longer need to “direct traffic” when it
comes to the roll process as all content sections are pre-
mapped to responsible authors and stakeholders.
Once a section has been updated and saved,
stakeholders are automatically informed and assigned the
task of reviewing that section.
This frees up the Product Manager to focus on the intellectual
property within the document, not the end to end process
around it.
Stakeholders can review different sections of the
document in parallel with other stakeholders and their
comments and advice are always linked to the source
document.
This means that all changes can be traced back to a
responsible stakeholder. It also means that new staff can
quickly understand why certain decisions have been
made in the past.
At the end of the verification process, a verification
certificate is automatically generated for signing.
Because the flow-based publishing engine is linked directly to
content produced during the verification process, the Marketing
team can focus on the design and brand aspects of disclosure
collateral rather than spend all their time on typesetting
constantly evolving disclosure content.
Any last minute changes can then also be easily
incorporated into the final, print ready documents.

8. © Objective Corporation
PERFECT PRODUCT
PDS
VERIFICATION Organisations are able to effectively manage multiple versions of content (down to the paragraph, cell level) as well as the proof
justifying the content, provide transparency of updates, incorporate mechanisms to properly consider review and advice, and
fully audit everything that happens in a roll process.
Mature and centralised processes deliver confidence that compliance obligations have been met.
Content authors rest easy in the knowledge that their
updates to content are versioned and saved down to the
section, paragraph, table and cell.
Previous versions are easily accessible and version
comparison technology enables previous versions to be
easily compared.
Evidence of statements can be associated with these
versions of content sections for ease of verification
Review comments are tied to versions of content items
and authors can easily accept or reject review input and
provide reasons for their decisions.
This “tracking” of comments and reasons for inclusion or
otherwise ensure a smooth verification process.
Evidence, associated with content versions, makes
verification easy.
The publication engine allows multiple draft versions of
print ready and downloadable PDF documents to be
easily generated, on demand to ensure typesetting
accuracy.
In market disclosure documents are also easily available
and obvious.
PARA 3 VERSION HISTORY
v1.1 v1.2 v1.3 v2.0
EVIDENCE
FOR PARA 3
v2.1

9. © Objective Corporation
COMMON CONTENT Organisations are able to significantly increase efficiency and substantially lower risk by taking an holistic approach to the
management of common business (or portfolio) content (or “common clauses”).
Common Content reduce the time to market for new and updated products by eliminating the need to
independently update, review and verify the same content across multiple documents.
Having a centralised, signed off library for common
content ensures that key messages, approved legislative
statements and organisational culture are communicated
accurately and with a single “corporate voice”.
In addition, content authors no longer have to spend time
finding the latest version of common content or worse,
creating their own version of it.
Common Content may be reviewed and verified separately to the
documents it is used in (and thus outside of a product roll)
substantially reducing the “spike” in effort experienced during
typical product rolls, and increasingly reducing the overall time
to market for the product.
This is particularly important when limited (or indeed
expensive external) resources are utilised for such
reviews.
The use of common content ensures that the business
(and it’s sub-brands) are represented consistently and in a
professional manner through all touch points and for all
product families.
VERIFIED
COMMON CONTENT
PERFECT PRODUCT
PDS
PERFECT PRODUCT
PLUS PDS
CORPORATE
PRODUCT PDS
STATEMENT OF ADVICE

10. © Objective Corporation
]
Organisations are able to manage the increasing volume of product disclosure documents across the business by adopting a
“Master Shell” approach, where content common to a family of products is authored, updated and verified once only for all
products in the family, and specific product variations are managed using conditional rules and variable metadata.
This significantly improves time to market of the entire product portfolio.
MASTER SHELL
Product teams are able to create a single “master shell”
for each disclosure that is automatically re-used across a
product family incorporating product specific metadata
(e.g. “Product Name”, “Product Tag Line” etc) and with
content included conditionally based on the specific
product.
In addition, foreign language translations of the content
may be maintained, alongside the original, in order to
service multiple, geographic markets.
Adopting a Master Shell approach dramatically reduces
the amount of content that needs to be reviewed and
verified.
Rather than having to review each document across a family,
reviewers simply review the single Master Shell document
content, the set of product specific fields and the product
specific conditional content.
The addition of a new product to a family is simply a
matter of adding new fields and selecting which
conditional content applies.
The Master Shell approach allows automated publishing
of multiple product disclosure documents and digital
assets with a single click.
Product (or brand) specific variants are automatically
rendered based on the appropriate data fields and
conditional data rules. with no possibility of human error in
the conversion process, and with no need to individually
typeset each document variant.
DATA DRIVEN
FIELDS
[product name]
[market commentary]
[fund performance]
CONDITIONAL
CONTENT
CONNECT
TRANSLATION
PERFECT PRODUCT
PDS
26%
PERFECT PRODUCT
PLUS PDS
42%
CORPORATE
PRODUCT PDS
34%
corporate
product
market
commentary
[product name]
PDS
product
specific
market
commentary[
]perform%[
MASTER SHELL

11. © Objective Corporation
Organisations are able to increase efficiency and lower risk through white-labelling of offerings and automated production of on-
brand document variants for corporate brands and sub-brands, corporate clients or for wholesaling to boutique clients by
Responsible Entities for hire.
White labelling solves the challenge of producing on-brand product variants without the need to
independently update, review and verify multiple similar disclosure assets.
WHITE LABELLING
Subject Matter Experts and Product Managers avoid having to
worry about creating multiple variants of any given document
(or digital asset) to cater for client, brand or geography specific
content (e.g. fees, currency, responsible entity address details
etc) or indeed temporal information (e.g. performance and
activity data).
Reviewers don’t need to review multiple variants of the same
document.
They need only review the generic content along with the rules or
specifications that drive the elaboration of the placeholder fields or
document elements.
Internal designers don’t need to waste time on designing
multiple variants of the same document where the only
variance is the branding or key data elements. If external
agencies are used then significant cost can be saved in this
regard.
BRAND2
BRAND
ONE1
special client
PERFECT PRODUCT
PDS
PERFECT PRODUCT
PDS
PERFECT PRODUCT
PDS
BRAND2

12. © Objective Corporation
Organisations are able to utilise data from line of business systems either as content within disclosure collateral (e.g.
performance data) or to control conditional content in the collateral.
Data synchronisation minimises the risk of human error in re-using commentary or data from existing
line of business systems.
INTEGRATION
Significant portions of content provided in disclosure
documents and through digital disclosure mechanisms is
sourced from internal line of business (LOB) systems or from
controlled Excel spreadsheets.
LOBs typically manage fee, fund, performance data and
product information. Direct integration and automated
updates ensure content is always up to date.
Spreadsheets are complex and the process of automatically
import, load and extract name ranges and graphs/charts for
use in disclosure assets is traditionally error prone. Automating
this process and versioning at the sheet, asset and content
layer in the final disclosure documents ensures full compliance
with regulatory requirements.
More crucial, though, is ensuring that any updates to the source data
(LOB or Excel Spreadsheet) are immediately pulled through to
disclosure assets, automatically and accurately, removing the
significant risk associated with traditional copy and paste
mechanisms.
In addition, disclosure content is being sourced from third
party data and analytics brokers, such as Bloomberg or
Morningstar. Copy and pasting of such information is inherently
risky, however, direct API based integration delivers both
efficiency and reduced risk for product managers.
RESTful, self describing, APIs enable granular, robust
integration to to support your integration needs and
architectural dependencies. For example, access full
disclosure assets, or pertinent sections of those assets, as
required by your Customer Communication Management
(CCM) system.
Line of
Business
Systems
Excel
Spreadsheets
Third party data and
analytics services
62%
outperformed
PERFECT PRODUCT
PDS

13. © Objective Corporation
Organisations are able to de-couple the design and branding of print and digital collateral from the content verification process.
They are also able to easily produce print ready, downloadable or innovative digital disclosure artefacts based on pre-defined
flow based templates, combined with verified content.
One-click publishing dramatically reduces the time taken to revision collateral based on roll updates or last
minute content changes.
ONE CLICK PUBLISHING
Product Managers create significant IP for an organisation
which drives the design of profitable Products and Services.
Often, the core tenets of this IP is skewed or misinterpreted
during the translation from product management to marketing.
Automating this translation ensures collateral is both on-brand but
also on-message.
Introducing the human element of copying and pasting from
verified content to marketing collateral introduces risk.
By ensuring that published content is intrinsically linked to verified
content, much of this risk is removed.
One click publishing and automated document formatting
enables designers to concentrate on the look and feel of
portfolio documents without having the laborious task of type-
setting and verification of the final published documents.
Last minute changes to verified content are easily and
automatically incorporated without the need for a round trip to
the design agency. Super Life Plus
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VERFIFIED CONTENT
COMMON CONTENT
PRODUCT SPECIFIC
PERFECT
PRODUCT
PERFECT
PRODUCT PLUS
< >
CORPORATE
PRODUCT
EXTERNAL CONTENT
[ product_name ]
PDS MASTER SHELL PUBLISHING
CONFIGURATION
PUBLISHING
ENGINE
PRINT AND DIGITAL DISCLOSURES

14. © Objective Corporation
TIME TO MARKET Mature organisations will have invested in designed-for-purpose technology that targets both the key pain area of collaborative
content production and verification, as well as in-house, one-click publishing to print and digital assets..
All with the primary goal of reducing time to market for new or updated products.
1
Product Manager creates new
master shell and sections are
automatically assigned to SME’s
and Reviewers.
3
Authorising Individual approves
final PDS triggering the automatic
creation of Verification Certificate.
2
SMEs update only their sections
of document - in parallel.
4
Legal and DDDC are automatically
notified when appropriate sections are
ready for review They add advice
directly into the document shell.
6 8
75
Client Manager and Responsible Entities
define rules and specifications relating to
their own clients and/or brands.
Marketing configures publishing
engine for print and electronic
documents; web pages and
apps.
Publishing Engine combined with verified
content delivers beautifully formatted
content through multiple online and
traditional channels.
Full support for Customer
Communication Management and
Digital Disclosure through direct
content delivery and APIs
UPDATE &
COLLABORATION
Controlled content creation and update
in a single master shell supported by
process automation (delivering
automated task notifications to authors
and reviewers) as well as cross
portfolio Common Content
specification, verification
and re-use.
DIGITALLY TRANSFORMED DISCLOSURE PROCESS
PDF
ID
PRINT
WEB
MOBILE
API
COMPLIANCE &
RISK MANAGEMENT
Full audit and tracking of every system
event ensures that all decisions can be
traced back to an individual, all proof
can be maintained with the associated
content and all content is versioned at
the document, section, paragraph and
spreadsheet cell level.
BRANDING &
PUBLISHING
Separately designed and managed
on-brand templates for print
documents, electronic documents,
web pages and web applications
allow verified content to be directly
sourced and automatically
incorporated into published
artefacts.

15. © Objective Corporation
BENEFITS Results from our customers demonstrate a minimum 40% reduction in the time taken to complete a product roll -
increasing exponentially as the number of portfolio documents or variants of those documents increases. In addition,
organisational risk is reduced through mature content version management; a transparent and accountable verification process;
and automated, volume publication (print, pdf, digital) process.
“Product management and Compliance
teams can reduce the time and effort
required to create, review, verify and
approve new and rolled Products.
Marketing and distribution teams can
ensure the delivery of brand compliant,
high quality Product documentation
without manual intervention.
… organisations can reduce their
regulatory and reputational risk
exposure and deploy new Products
faster, which decreases speed-to-
market while achieving significant cost
savings”
Accelerating Speed-to-Market
Best Practices in Product Documentation Management,
FST Media, 2014
Beautiful, on-brand disclosure
collateral based on centralised,
signed off content, through
multiple channels offering,
unprecedented support for
customer engagement
40% reduction in …
… time taken to complete a roll.
Significantly reduced compliance
risk through centralised single
document management and control,
full transparency of all activities and
direct sourcing of verified content by
the publication engine.

16. © Objective Corporation
PROVEN
Objective | Keystone is utilised by major financial service
organisations to manage the entire lifecycle of mandatory
and regulated documents such as PDS, AIB, Fact Sheets,
IDPS Guides, Dashboards, Monthly, Quarterly and Annual
Reporting, Client Reporting, Application Booklets, Forms and
other documents and digital content generated to support
products in market.
Objective | Keystone’s collaborative authoring, workflow,
verification and publishing engine capability ensures
documents and digital assets are structured, managed,
updated, authorised and published to your brand guidelines,
removing the historic challenges of manual processes,
content and approval coordination, heavy formatting and
expensive design and studio bills to produce the documents
Objective | Keystone has been packaged specifically for the
Financial Service and Insurance market to reduce risk, ensure
compliance with regulatory authorities, speed up the product
roll process and ensure quality, on-brand output across all
disclosure channels and brands.
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