Scottish Provident International Launches Online Transaction Service

Carla Johnson, InvestorsOffshore.com

14 March 2001

Scottish Provident International (SPI) has announced plans to offer a personalised portfolio bond with an online transaction and valuation service. Entitled Choice, the bond will enable investors to utilise SPI as a broker to buy into equities, hedge funds and collective investment schemes. Iain Fairbairn, investment marketing manager at SPI, told Investors Week: 'Investors could even buy Nokia, Ericsson and Yahoo. If they are feeling conservative, they could buy UK Government gilts.'

To complement Choice, SPI is also launching a new Internet-based valuation and transaction service through which advisers and consultants will have access via a password to a secure web server giving them instant valuations of their clients' portfolios. Other services offered through the web site include daily pricing updates on a multitude of underlying securities, so valuations of portfolios and individual securities will be available online.

SPI say the service will not currently support 'straight-through' processing because not all the jurisdictions that SPI wants to sell in permit it but this is set to change some time in the near future as more and more jurisdictions begin to allow that form of processing. For the time being transactions involving exchange, sale or purchase can be initiated on line.

Choice can be charged for in one of two ways. The first is to charge 0.125% of the total assets value per quarter, while the second is to charge a fixed quarterly fee of £35 and brokerage fees will be passed on to investors.

Choice will initially be available in Hong Kong, the Middle East, Africa and Scandinavia. Other investors outside the UK, US and Japan will have access to the fund at a later date.

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