Provider Valuations and Fund Mappings
If you regularly use JCS to electronically value policies against Providers' online services, and you perform valuations at the fund holding level, you will be aware that this was a rather cumbersome task, with very little in the way of suggestions to help the end user throughout the process.
In the November release of 2017, this part of JCS has been overhauled to assist the user as much as possible.
JCS will now attempt to make relevant suggestions for both Fund Providers and Fund Names based on the information made available by each provider. Although, it should be pointed out that not all providers are the same, and some supply very rich data, and others supply the absolute minimum of data.
The first thing that stands out, is the colour system being used to indicate the status or type of suggestion. This is simple to remember:
Fund name is already mapped to an existing fund in JCS
Fund is not mapped, but the highest ranked suggestion is an existing Fund Provider/Fund Name in JCS
Fund is not mapped, but the highest ranked suggestion is to create a new Fund Provider or Fund Name in JCS
Unless you think a mistake has been made, the entries in green can be ignored as they have all been mapped previously.
All suggestions are made on a ranking basis, the highest ranking suggestion being the first/top item in the drop down list, with other entries below in descending order of ranking.
Suggestions may be existing Fund Providers/Fund Names, or the suggestion to create a new Fund Provider/Fund Name in JCS.
The ranking algorithms involved are heavily dependant on the data within JCS, and previous choices made by users, meaning the more you use it, the more the algorithms will be able to assist by making better suggestions.
Take for example, the Fund Description of "Standard Life Asian Income Fund". With no other information, previous mappings, or existing providers in JCS, should the Fund Provider be "Standard" or "Standard Life"? In this situation, the highest ranked suggestion would be "Standard", with a Fund Name of "Life Asian Income Fund". However, as soon as the Fund Provider "Standard Life" is selected, created and mapped, all future suggestions will place "Standard Life" higher than "Standard".
It is now also possible to auto suggest, map and unmap individual funds, so that you can work your way through the list of funds and save any work along the way.
When a fund has not been seen before and is unmapped, it will start off as being empty. If you click on the "Auto" button on the right hand side, it will automatically select the highest ranked suggestions, which will fill with either blue or red suggestions. If the fund type and unit type are still unknown, then these will need to be selected before being able to click on the "Map" button. This entire line will then turn green to show it is mapped.
If you make a mistake, or find an incorrect mapping, you can now unmap a fund from the same screen. It might be that a previous user selected the wrong fund type, unit type, or that you just want to create a new fund with a cleaner name. Just click on the "Unmap" button, and then go through the same process as above.
Sometimes, a fund description does not contain enough hints as to what fund type or unit type it is. However, if the provider also supplies any industry standard fund codes, these will be shown on the screen, and it is possible to double click on the code itself to open an Internet browser. This will either take you to a provider own fund information website, or perform a simple google search. The type of search is dependant on the provider. We have found throughout testing, that ISIN codes return the best results when using a search engine.
Whilst these updates cannot assist that much when using providers that supply limited information, we hope that these changes will make fund mapping just a little bit easier for you.
