Success Story

KIID- Implementation at AllianzGI Europe

The client

Allianz Global Investors Europe (AllianzGI Europe) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Allianz SE. With EUR 526 billion in assets under management (status: June, 30 2010), AllianzGI is among the top investment firms worldwide, maintaining a substantial presence in the USA, Europe and Asia. Drawing on the expertise of a network of global investment specialists, AllianzGI offers private and institutional clients a comprehensive spectrum of investment styles and asset classes.

The objective

Through adoption of EU Directive 2009/65/EC (the UCITS IV Directive) on June, 13 2009, the European Commission began to require preparation of a “Key Investor Information Document” (KIID) for retail funds.  

The objective of this project was to create a uniform technical platform for KIID to be used jointly by all firms that make up AllianzGI Europe. According to the project specification: data collection, SRRI monitoring as well as regular and event-specific KIID production were to be centralised via the platform. The rollout for subsidiaries in Germany, Luxembourg and Ireland was set for July, 1 2011; for all remaining firms, the system goes live at the start of 2012.

The project

At the start of 2011, a joint project was launched between AllianzGI Europe and IDS and the following key challenges were quickly identified:

  • To address the volume parameters – for roughly 580 funds and unit classes – a largely automated process was necessary for KIID planning;
  • To prevent errors in data transmission and eliminate redundant check routines for data transfer, the solutions had to run as far forward as possible in the information systems of the client, Allianz GI Europe;
  • The need for weekly review of risk classification necessitated a process that links automated calculation of the SRRI with the possibility of rule-based, automated updating of the KIIDs. A particular challenge in this context was presented by “structured products”: Monte Carlo simulations were necessary for regular calculation of the SRRI; 
  • The KIID are to be presented to every interested customer before an investment decision is made. Consequently, it was in the interest of AllianzGI Europe to have the documents produced based on a uniform, high-quality design with a strong recognition factor for the AllianzGI brand.

IDS decided in favour of an infrastructure for implementation of the complex requirements, in which the content of possible KIIDs would be managed using a high-performance database configured to handle the specific demands, with the creation of actual KIIDs executed based on fund-specific rules. The variable text elements to be used were delivered by AllianzGI Europe. For document layout and design, IDS decided on the “Actuate” system as presenting the best degree of flexibility and graphical quality for the final product. A further advantage of Actuate was its proven track record with fact sheet creation, which experience IDS has already been able to integrate into expansion and parameterisation of the system.

The success story

On deadline (July, 1 2011), the KII documents were published for roughly 580 retail funds and/or fund unit classes of the subsidiaries in Germany, Luxembourg and Ireland as set out in the project plan. All of the fund types were covered by SRRI classifications: approx. 86% were market funds and 6% total return funds, with the remaining 6% distributed among absolute return, life cycle and structured funds. As many as 16 languages were used for the various KIIDs, some of which required non-Latin character sets. What is important about this project is that, beyond the initial publication of the KIIDs, a process was also put in place to allow automated monitoring of the SRRI and risk classification, as well as the ability for individualised, rule-based KIID updating.

This permitted AllianzGI Europe to meet the regulatory demand for KIID publication in Germany within the timeframe specified by law. Moreover, the early integration of its fund management firms in Luxembourg and Ireland has put the company into a pioneering position when it comes to publication of consistent KIIDs Europe-wide. In the second phase, this process will be completed through expansion to include funds of the subsidiaries in UK, France and Italy.

August 2011