IF THERE is one thing that investors do not like it’s not being able to get easy access to their money.
So when technical difficulties at Alliance Trust Savings (ATS) meant investors in Alliance Trust had problems accessing not just their cash but someone who could help them too, they were understandably irate.
To make matters worse, because ATS is wholly owned by the investment trust, any difficulties it experiences have a direct impact on the trust’s performance and so the investors’ returns.
No wonder Alliance Trust’s board were grilled on ATS’s woes when hosting the trust’s AGM in Dundee yesterday.
While one shareholder bemoaned the “horrendous” loss made by ATS in 2017, another questioned why, if it took him “two seconds” to make an investment via ATS, it took him two weeks to get his money back.
Although ATS interim chief executive Ron Baxter did not provide an answer to that question specifically, he did make it clear that the problem with ATS generally is that the platform is just a bit too “clunky”.
To be fair to the trust’s board the problems with ATS, while frustrating for anyone trying to use the platform, have little to do with the trust itself, with the savings arm being hived off into a separate entity with its own management board in 2015.
And, as Alliance Trust chairman Lord Smith of Kelvin pointed out, while the fact that ATS is loss-making is not exactly great news for the trust, because it makes up just 1.3 per cent of the overall portfolio the impact that has had on investor returns is minimal.
But the historical links between the two, not to mention their near identical names and branding, means a problem with one almost by definition becomes a problem for the other.
While a trading platform that allows investors easy access to a range of funds is a clear marketing win for the fund that owns it, perhaps it’s time that ATS was given a new identity?
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