case study - IMA 

The Investment Management Association (IMA) is the trade body for the UK investment management industry. It was formed in February 2002 as a result of a merger between the Fund Managers’ Association (FMA) and the Association of Unit Trusts and Investment Funds (AUTIF). IMA’s members provide investment management services to institutions (for example, life assurance companies, pension funds and individual companies) and to private investors, through individual fund management agreements and pooled products such as authorised investment funds. Between them, IMA’s members manage over £2 trillion worth of assets.

IMA’s remit is to foster the good reputation of the industry and to promote a legal, tax and regulatory environment which is appropriate for the needs of asset managers and their customers. The association works with government, regulators and other policy makers in the UK and across Europe. It also provides a centre of excellence for the understanding of investment management.

The association’s website (www.investmentuk.org) provides investors with an abundance of educational material including industry data, a directory of investment funds and fund prices. Through the work of its statistics and research team www.investmentuk.org is the UK’s premier source of information about the investment management industry at a national, European and international level.

Zoë Heffernan is website manager at IMA and has been working alongside Xtranet for over three years

“The website is critical to the association – not only for the members and the public at large; but also the staff here who use the site as a primary source of information”

Zoë Heffernan IMA

The site is aimed at multiple audiences including the general public, the financial media, the Inland Revenue, the Treasury, the FSA and the association’s staff. Authoritative and timely briefings; commentaries and intelligence on issues concerning the industry through circulars are available in the extensive members-only section. The site is updated as often as 40 times a day to ensure currency of information.

“Xtranet are clearly interested in the long term development of the association’s website. I rely on their understanding of our business sector and the experience they have gained through working with many of the UK’s financial market associations”

Zoë Heffernan IMA

Xtranet designed and developed AUTIF’s original site in 1997. Since then the site has been through two major redesigns and has grown considerably in both scope and size. New features added include an interactive modelling system to help users find savings plans appropriate to their needs; integrated list-server technology allowing different information to be sent to relevant categories of user; and compliance-ensuring RingFence technology.

“Xtranet provide the highest level of service: there is always a timely response”

“I have come to rely on the importance Xtranet place on knowledge transfer – I see Xtranet as my technical gurus”.

Zoë Heffernan IMA

Today the site comprises 2,200 pages with a total size of 10GB and attracts 75,000 visits (1 million hits) per month. Xtranet host and support the site through our fully managed hosting service.

The importance of the website to IMA is reflected in a current project which will create a synchronised intranet version of the site – hosted at the association’s headquarters – which will be used by the association’s staff and form the basis of a contingency solution for www.investmentuk.org.