Fidelity enhances website in time for a busy ISA season

FIDELITY ENHANCES WEBSITE IN TIME FOR A BUSY ISA SEASON London, 23 January 2002 - Fidelity Investments' FundsNetwork, the UK's leading investment superstore, today announced extensive site enhancements and new investment tools using cutting edge technology to coincide with its busiest time of year. FundsNetwork is regularly accessed by users who fall into three distinct groups: individual investors; financial advisers; and individual investors who invest through an adviser. A key feature of the new design is that the site has been divided into three individual sites with different home pages for each user group, making it even easier to navigate. Ann Davis, Executive Director at Fidelity Investments, said: "Making an online investment can involve an initial outlay of several thousand pounds, so the investor must trust the site absolutely and have everything they need at their finger tips to make the right investment decision for them. The website was redesigned following extensive usability testing with individual customers to ensure that the information was as quick and simple to access as possible, and that the vast array of fund and investment information available was in the most easily searchable format." The website incorporates new features including: The Newsroom - bringing together all fund, pricing and performance information as well as global market news to give investors quality data on which to base their investment decisions. The Market News section within the Newsroom gives investors access to the performance of the world's stockmarkets and daily investment news from across the globe. Within the Fund News area, investors can look at FundsNetwork's top-five selling and top-five performing funds split into nine different fund categories, such as UK Corporate Bonds, Global Growth and Japan. It also contains up-to-date prices of all 565 of FundsNetwork's 37 fund providers' funds, and all Fidelity fund prices can be relayed to individuals via WAP mobile phone technology. Investors can then use the Chart Tool to map a handful of potential funds over a chosen time period, to track potential investment opportunities before actually making a purchase. Enhanced WealthCheck tool - a questionnaire to match an individual's attitude to risk and their investment goals, with one of four hypothetical portfolios - Balanced, Growth, Active Growth and Aggressive Growth. These include a percentage breakdown in terms of both asset allocation and geographical diversification. The website now offers investors access to next generation investment tools: Improved fund finder tool - FundsNetwork has enhanced its fund selection tool - using technology not seen before on any other fund supermarket - to make picking a fund from the 565 currently available, both quicker and more effective. More detailed fund information and independent research - FundsNetwork now has more comprehensive, yet easy to understand, individual fund factsheets to help investors make the best-informed investment choices. It is also the only fund supermarket to combine research reports from credit rating agencies, Standard and Poor's and Morningstar. New portfolio analysis tool - Morningstar's Portfolio X-ray allows investors to review their entire portfolio at a glance by breaking it down in terms of asset allocation, world regions, sectors and investment styles. This will help to ensure that investors are on target to meet long-term investment goals and are not over-exposed to a particular stock or geographical area, for example. With sales topping £540 million since launch in June 2000, FundsNetwork has attracted over 75,000 investors, 59% of which are brand new investors who have previously held no Fidelity products. Over 62,000 investors joined FundsNetwork in 2001, with those from London and the South East appearing the most investment savvy - accounting for a third (32%) of total direct sales. A gender shift in the average investor profile is also clear. Women are now taking more control of the supermarket trolley with a female:male split of 40:60, compared to 30:70 at launch. Ann Davis concluded: "Far from shying away from using the internet for financial purposes, our audience is growing at a rate of 1,700 per month - with women making up an ever increasing proportion. We have undertaken this site redesign to ensure that we remain capable of dealing with the very high level of demand expected during the ISA season and beyond with ease, and to continue to offer our customers the best, fastest and most stable platform for online investment." For further information on FundsNetwork, investors can visit www.fundsnetwork.co.uk or call 0800 41 41 81 Fidelity International Limited, which trades under the name Fidelity Investments, serves the major markets of the world by providing investment products and services to individuals and institutional investors outside the US. Together with FMR Corp of Boston, USA, Fidelity is the largest independent fund management organisation in the world with US$897.2 billion assets under management.* Assets as at 30.09.01 include those of FMR Corp, a US company and affiliate and its subsidiaries. For further information, please contact: Jo Roddan/Niki Cousins/ or Lindsay Vetch/Alison Cort Helen Hughes Fidelity Investments Lansons Communications Tel: 01737 837 848/847/846 Tel: 0207 490 8828 Joanne.roddan@uk.fid-intl.com Lindsayv@lansons.com Niki.cousins@uk.fid-intl.com Alisonc@lansons.com Helen.hughes@uk.fid-intl.com For up-to-date and archived press releases please visit Fidelity's new MEDIA CENTRE at www.fidelity.co.uk CB10900 ------------------------------------------------------------ This information was brought to you by Waymaker http://www.waymaker.net The following files are available for download: http://www.waymaker.net/bitonline/2002/01/23/20020123BIT00520/bit0002.doc http://www.waymaker.net/bitonline/2002/01/23/20020123BIT00520/bit0002.pdf