Financial Express Acquires eValue from Towers Watson

Specialist funds analysis company Financial Express today confirms it has acquired eValue, a leading stochastic forecasting business, from global professional services company Towers Watson (NYSE, NASDAQ: TW). This creates a market-leading fund research and modelling proposition for life and pensions companies and advisers. For the first time clients will benefit from a comprehensive review of past fund performance, forecasts for probable future returns and leading edge financial planning tools from the same provider.

Towers Watson’s decision to sell eValue to Financial Express followed a strategic assessment of its business in the context of the Retail Distribution Review (RDR). This showed that the powerful combination of eValue’s stochastic modelling and Financial Express’ data and analytical capabilities would result in genuinely value adding solutions for clients. By closely integrating investor risk profiling, fund research and portfolio construction and review, exciting opportunities arise to meet the new market requirements to focus on transparency and improved consumer outcomes.

As a result of this acquisition, Financial Express will be able to deliver an independent whole-of-market forecasting tool to a broad intermediary platform. This will have important advantages to eValue, the advisory industry as a whole and most importantly to consumers who, in addition to benefitting from market leading fund research, will have access to realistic forecasts of future outcomes. This will enable them to understand how the funds recommended can help to fulfil their future financial needs.

Following the acquisition, Towers Watson will continue to market eValue to its pension fund clients as well as providing Financial Express with stochastic and asset modelling expertise. eValue’s client contracts will transfer to Financial Express as well as all business and employee assets. eValue will become a subsidiary of Financial Express and will continue to operate from its premises in Newbury. eValue will continue to be led by its existing management team of Bruce Moss and Samantha Seaton. As the two businesses are extremely complementary, no redundancies are anticipated.

Michael Holland, managing director, Financial Express said, "By combining Financial Express’ historic performance analysis and eValue’s pre-eminent financial planning tools and stochastic modelling capabilities, we have created a market-leading proposition for life and pensions companies and advisers. With integrated data, analysis and forecasting, this new entity will provide effective analytical and reporting solutions to meet the requirements of a changing regulatory environment. Clients will enjoy a broader portfolio of services designed to deliver rapid and effective responses to new challenges facing the industry.”

Martin Pike, EMEA managing director, risk consulting and software at Towers Watson, said, "The sale of eValue marks a natural step in the evolution of a long-standing working relationship with Financial Express and establishes a compelling solution for life and pensions companies and advisers. We are confident that Financial Express will continue to offer the high levels of service that eValue clients have enjoyed and we will continue to provide our other market-leading services where appropriate.”

Notes to Editors

About eValue
eValue provides a comprehensive range of leading edge financial planning tools using stochastic modelling to forecast potential investment outcomes. Its software solutions allow businesses to effectively communicate investment, risk and reward to policyholders of insurance companies, to investors in mutual funds and to employees as part of employee benefits programmes. eValue has an impressive list of clients which include major life & pensions companies, banks, fund platforms and employers.

About Towers Watson
Towers Watson (NYSE, NASDAQ: TW) is a leading global professional services company that helps organizations improve performance through effective people, risk and financial management. The company offers solutions in the areas of employee benefits, talent management, rewards, and risk and capital management. Towers Watson has 14,000 associates around the world and is located on the web at www.towerswatson.com

About Financial Express
www.financialexpress.net
Financial Express is the largest distributor of fund data in the UK and is the main or sole supplier of data to many of the leading data vendors, including Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters and Telekurs. Financial Express also provides data and web-based fund analysis software to the UK’s leading fund supermarkets, life and wrap platforms, product providers, financial advisers and networks, software houses, financial portals and private investors.

Financial Express offers value-added services that are more than just data. They include independent research, analysis and fund information from:

• Analytics, the award winning online research tool used by the adviser community, life companies and investment houses (www.financialexpress.net/analytics)
• Trustnet, the UK’s leading fund information and research website
• Investegate, a comprehensive online source of real-time company announcements

Media Licence
Financial Express will provide access to its online fund data and analysis platform free of charge to the media with the stipulation that if the data is used in an article the source, Financial Express, should be cited. Please contact Emma Baldock or Hugo Mortimer-Harvey at Quill PR on 020 7758 2237/34 for more details or email emma@quillpr.com / hugo@quillpr.com.