Data and Research December 5, 2017

The Evolution of Financial Services Firms’ Home Page Design

Initially focused on advertising, company web pages are now a graphically vivid entrée to valuable information.

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A public website home page sets the tone for the website experience and forms investors’ first impressions as they research asset managers and brokerage firms online, according to Corporate Insight. The company, located in New York City, provides competitive intelligence and user experience research to insurers, financial services firms and educational institutions, helping them improve their digital capabilities.

In celebration of its 25th anniversary, Corporate Insight has released a series of slide decks that look back at different ways financial services firms have evolved in the digital space since the 1990s including tracing the digital evolution of financial firms’ home page design. A few highlights from “Trends in Homepage Design” follow.

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From 1996 through 2000, designs used table-based layouts and were text-heavy, with few images. Page hit counters, animated text and moving GIFs [graphics interchange format] were popular. Navigation menus were at the bottom of the page, and the content stressed products and services rather than advertising.

From 2001 through 2006, a static menu of tabs was considered an advanced design structure. The center section of the home page provided links to the main content features. Pages featured “advertisement-focused styles” with JPEG images, flash or GIFs. On the horizon were a shift from a simple symbol search to search via a field in the header, plus the addition of sub-tabs, embedded branch locator tools and more color.

From 2007 through 2011, design elements showcased JavaScript through drop-down menus, advanced navigation pages and web forms. About 33% of these sites provided secondary navigation, and 33% offered multimedia. At this time, news headlines were integrated, as were links to social media pages.

From 2012 through 2015, design trends included responsive design, predictive search, large vibrant images as well as promotion of a firm’s unique business focus and thought leadership.

In 2016, 65% of asset management firms featured a banner image on their home page. Fifty-eight percent included links to fund overview pages, 29% featured a dedicated search field for products, and 58% were responsibly designed.

This year, 53% of asset management firms help investors access fund performance overview pages through fund search tools or quick links. Thirty-three percent provide quick links on their home page.

Emerging design trends the company sees include a centralization of commentaries, funds and tools on while the page provides easy access to other site sections. In the future, it also expects more asset management and brokerage firms to shift to mobile-optimized sites that have responsive design and long-scroll layouts.

For access to the full series of reports, go to pages.corporateinsight.com/e/153191/5th-anniv-homepage-design-file/jypxvq/318334264.
Investing December 5, 2017

Year-End Market Analysis Highlights Global Momentum

However, the increasing “narrowness” of the sources of return in broad market indexes is concerning to MFS experts.

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During a year-end investing outlook webcast hosted by MFS Investment Management, James Swanson, chief investment strategist, and Erik Weisman, chief economist, highlighted stronger global growth and “merely moribund” inflation as important tail winds for U.S. retirement savers.

Of course, they also pointed to global macroeconomic concerns—fitting squarely in the camp viewing the economic rise of China increasingly as a concern for the performance of developed Western economies.  

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The MFS data shows relative global growth trends have held steady since 2012: Developed economies have hovered between 0.5% and 2% GDP growth while emerging economies have ranged between 3.5% and 5% over that time. Interestingly, manufacturing performance indicators have been more even across global and developed economies—in fact developed economies have turned in higher manufacturing performance index levels since roughly 2013.

According to the MFS experts, “global inflation is still missing in action.” Inflation in the U.S. since 2015 has remained very close to the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, while inflation in the Eurozone has hovered around 1%. MFS pins inflation in China around 0% to 0.5% for this time period, while Japan has slipped in 2017 toward and even below 0% inflation.

Swanson and Weisman presented evidence to the effect that improved growth this year has come on the back of better industrial production and better trade. Moving to the all-important question of whether economic fundamentals align with current market pricing, they suggest there are some reasons for valuation concern. Right now the S&P 500 is trading around 18-times the price-to-next-12-months’ earnings ratios, compared with an average of 14.4-times. European indexes similarly are trading some distance above the long-term average. Emerging markets and Japan, on the other hand, are trading right in the ballpark of their long-term averages.

The increasing “narrowness” of the sources of return in broad market indexes is also concerning to the MFS experts. Looking at the returns from the top 50 companies by market capitalization in the S&P 500, one sees that just the top 10% of companies by market cap represent a whopping 56% of total returns. In Europe the issue is equally apparent: the top 5% of the MSCI EAFE index returned 32% of the total return so far in 2017.

According to Swanson and Weisman high merger and acquisition activity tied to margin borrowing indicate the impressively long-live bull market may be reaching late in its cycle. However other signs are cause for optimism about an even longer growth streak—for example the percent total of U.S. households who are delinquent on credit card balances, which peaked at nearly 14% in 2009, has since dropped to 6% in 2017.

On the fixed-income side, MFS clients are increasingly asking questions about how to address the flattening yield curve, the experts noted. This will not be easy, but there are potential options for potentially boosting returns, such as laddering the portfolio.

The pair concluded that the markets in 2018 will be driven by four themes: even concentrated markets; growth over profits; questions about the conventional efficient investment thesis; and evolving convictions about growth versus value investments.

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