ReportLab Solutions for Financial Services

ReportLab's customers include: Fidelity Investments UK, American International Group Inc., Charles Stanley & Company, American International Group Inc., Taskforce Systems Ltd, IANINC (now part of SS & C Technologies), and Reis, as well as a number who prefer not to be disclosed. We are helping them to offer entirely new experiences to their customers while making substantial cost savings internally.

If you are based in the London area and interested in what ReportLab can do for you, please come to one of our Financial Seminars.

ReportLab builds solutions to generate documents in PDF format, as well as data graphics in all common formats, at very high speeds. This lets us make exciting changes to common financial processes - helping to complete transactions online, deliver personalized informations to customers and business partners and cutting the cost of document production and delivery. Here are some of the places we can help:

Trade Confirmations and Contract Notes

Almost any kind of financial contract results in a confirmation document. Traditionally these are printed and posted, but banks and securities firms have been doing anything from bulk-faxing to sending insecure text emails as a substitute. You might want to give them more information, like an account balance or the associated terms and conditions. Our solutions generate an immutable PDF record in a split second. This can be archived, inserted into your own document imaging system if you have one; can be batched up for a daily print run where needed; and can be emailed out as an attachment with robust encryption, so that only the intended user can open it. Our PDFs can be digitally signed and in many locales an immutable PDF document is considered a substitute for a paper contract. Try our Contract Note demonstration.

Personalized Annual Reports

Our PageCatcher™ technology lets us reuse existing PDF content. It's easy to take a predesigned, professionally laid our annual report and to append or prepend personalized sections for every shareholder, incorporating it into a personalized mailing. Shareholders in investment trusts or members of cooperative savings associations can have a complete statement for the year. The promotional possibilities are endless, and the cost savings through reducing bulk print runs substantial.

Fund Fact Sheets and Brokerage Reports

Securities firms and fund managers have standards formats for reporting on performance and on outlook. We can create fully automatic solutions for generation of fund performance sheets, stock recommendations from databases, XML files or any other data source, whether they are destined for local laser printing or professional glossy output.

Our financial charts, built using our Diagra™ server, allow the extremely fine grained control needed to do index comparisons and other financial charts which behave correctly irrespective of the data and can generate thousands of charts per hour. And all the charts are available for reuse on the web and in other documents.

Streamlining Account Opening Procedures

Whether you are investing in a mutual fund, opening a brokerage account or applying for a mortgage online, documentation always needs to be produced. Our dynamic PDF solutions can take days and postal cycles out of the process, reduce error rates, and save on the cost both of outgoing documents and of processing the returns.

Sometimes you need a physical signature or a cheque. An account opening wizard on your web site can capture and validate the user's data. We generate and deliver a pre-filled application pack complete with pre-filled PDF forms, any needed prospectuses and disclaimers and marketing literature. See how fast we can fill in an application form! Where tax forms need to be filled in, we "pre-fill" the genuine Revenue documents, saving people from entering their name and address repeatedly.

The user gets the document immediately, so is more likely to return it than if several days have elapsed. This alone is a killer advantage. Let's say you are one of many mortgage providers offering preliminary applications on the web; you can safely assume that each user has applied to a handful of your competitors as well. If you give them a ten-page pre-filled document now, and your competitors send out 30 pages in the post 2 days later, who has the edge?

You will make immediate savings on postage; users can choose to get the PDF now and print it off, and many will take this option (although some may still elect to have the forms posted).

Next, you save on processing because all applications are legible and pre-validated - in fact, with a well designed system you should already have the data in your database, and simply need to match the returned form up with the database record. We can add bar codes to facilitate this. And both parties have an electronic record.

In other cases, the transaction takes place online but you still have to deliver a documentation pack. A rules-based system can assemble a PDF pack in seconds which contains exactly what the customer needs and no more. This can be posted, emailed or downloaded.

Client Reporting, Statements and Valuations

We can produce graphically rich statements and portfolio summaries, on the fly, in real time. These can include any desired data graphics, pre-designed content from your graphic designers, and even analysts' recommendations or marketing material to encourage more trading. Try our portfolio demo.

Let customers log into your site and configure the level of reporting THEY wish to see - how much detail and what kind of analysis - then let them choose whether to get them on demand, in regular emails, or by traditional post.

PDF Documents can be given a user name and password for extra security if needed.

In most locales, a customer who voluntarily elects to receive reporting via email doesn't need to receive a postal copy. Think of both the cost savings and the enriched experience if you could shift 10% of your reporting from print to the web.

Conditional Text - Contracts, Letters and Prospectuses

Many financial transactions need custom contracts or prospectuses. There is a huge burden on compliance departments in ensuring that all documentation in all channels - professional print, web site and pre-sales - are up to date and accurate. Our conditional text solutions let the business users easily maintain a master 'document template' with rules that vary the text, and to output it in HTML, PDF or even export to professional printing workflows with Quark Xpress. The conditional text can be combined with wizards to retrieve data from a database and calculate personalized scenarios. For example, see how our wizard on www.fidelity.co.uk lets an Independent Financial Adviser generate a personalised prospectus for a prospective client.

In the world of over-the-counter derivatives trading, there are similar needs. Every trade is essentially a custom contract, placing a huge burden on the people involved and often slowing down the deal flow. The ability to produce a digitally signed PDF contract with the terms built according to rules can offer a competitive edge as well as a cost saving.

A unified framework for financial reporting

Putting it all together, ReportLab's Enterprise Report Servers can offer a single hub which ties together ALL your financial documentation needs. To find out more, contact Andy Robinson (CEO) by email at or call on +44-7976-355742