1 February 27, 1991
TO: MEMBERS - ONE PER COMPLEX NO. 8-91
OPERATIONS COMMITTEE NO. 6-91
RESEARCH COMMITTEE NO. 5-91
INDUSTRY STATISTICS COMMITTEE NO. 1-91
RE: TWO NEW FUND DATABASE SERVICES AVAILABLE FROM ICI
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The Investment Company Institute is developing a new data
collection and dissemination service for members. Ultimately,
this service will have three main components:
1. Universal data collection. In addition to data currently
collected, the Institute will collect a wide variety of
other data of public interest about individual funds from
funds themselves and from other reliable sources, e.g. the
NASD daily fund pricing service. This data will include,
among other things, the information needed to compute fund
investment performance, i.e. NAVs, amount and date of
dividends and capital gains distributions, date of
reinvestment, reinvestment price, splits, etc.
2. Universal data dissemination. The Institute will
disseminate both the data it collects and historical raw
performance data it has obtained under license to members
and, eventually, to interested non-members. This
information will be accessed via the FUNDS system. The
information supplied directly by the Institute will be
limited to primary data. Calculated fund performance
information will not be available from the Institute.
3. Access via FUNDS to data, reports, and analyses prepared by
outside service providers. External service providers have
been invited to make their products and services available
in electronic format via FUNDS. It is expected that some
of these services would for a fee provide their fund
performance rankings, competitive analyses and other data
related products. Some of these products may include software
that would allow integration of service provider data with other
data available directly from the Institute via FUNDS.
TWO NEW SERVICES AVAILABLE NOW
As a first step in the development of the data
2dissemination services described above, the Institute will
make available to members by subscription two new electronic
database services: (1) open-end fund information needed to
compute investment performance and (2) closed-end fund price
and net asset value data.
The open-end fund service is based on historical
information compiled by Investment Company Data, Inc. on more
than 2,500 funds dating back to the later of 1962 or the
initiation of the fund. The database consists of month-end NAV,
the amount and date of distributions, splits and reinvestment
prices. This data is cross referenced to other data already in
the ICI maintained Individual Fund File currently accessible on
the FUNDS system. This referencing will allow the data to be
sorted against a wide variety of criteria, e.g. performance data
can be extracted for all funds with aggressive growth as
investment objective, assets less than $100 million, distribution
through a sales force, and no 12b-1 plan. Members who subscribe
to the Institute’s performance database service will need
their own software to compute total returns and to integrate
performance data with sales or asset data and other information
available via FUNDS. This data service may be used for sales
support and internal purposes but the data may not be resold nor
may the Institute be cited as a source for individual performance
rankings.
The closed-end fund database, also available by
subscription, will contain weekly NAV and price history on all
closed-end funds using the Institute’s weekly price quotation
service, dating back to October 1987. Currently, data is
included for 159 funds of which 19 are diversified funds, 80 are
specialized equity funds, 6 are flexible portfolio funds, 50 are
bond funds, and 4 are loan participation funds. This database
does not include information on closed-end funds dividends and
capital gains distributions. A technical description of these
databases is attached.
3License fees for these databases are as follows:
Open-end fund data
Member groups with aggregate assets > $10 billion = $6,000 per annum
" " " " " > $2 bil. < $10 bil. = $5,000 per annum
" " " " " > $1 bil. < $2 bil. = $4,000 per annum
" " " " " > $.5 bil. < $1 bil. = $3,000 per annum
" " " " " > $.1 bil. < $.5 bil. = $2,000 per annum
" " " " " < $1 bil. = $1,000 per annum
Closed-end fund data
Perpetual license to use historical data compiled to date = $200.
Annual update (weekly data) = $144.
Both historical datafiles will be conveyed to members on
diskettes. Periodic data updates will be via electronic files
accessible by FUNDS subscribers only.
Use of these new databases will be governed by a new
comprehensive FUNDS system license. This is necessitated by
conditions attached to the license to the historical open-end
data obtained from Investment Company Data Inc.
TO SUBSCRIBE
To subscribe to either of these new data services, please
complete the attached information form and return it to the
Institute. You will soon receive a packet containing software
license agreements and additional technical information. Should
you have immediate questions regarding this service, please call
Mike Halbrook at the Institute at (202) 955-3553.
C. Richard Pogue
Senior Vice President - Management
Enclosures