About us

Who we are & what we do

Fidelity International offers world class investment solutions and retirement expertise to institutions, individuals and their advisers - to help our clients build better futures for themselves and generations to come. As a private company we think generationally and invest for the long term. Helping clients to save for retirement and other long term investing objectives has been at the core of our business for nearly 50 years.

We offer our own investment solutions and access to those of others, and deliver services relating to investing: For individual investors and their advisers we provide guidance to help them invest in a simple and cost effective way. For institutions including pension funds, banks and insurance companies we offer tailored investment solutions and full-service asset management outsourcing. And for employers we provide workplace pension administration services on top or independently of investment management. We are responsible for total client assets of : USD $379.2* billion from over 2.4 million clients across Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and South America.

Our history

Established in 1969 as the international arm of Fidelity Investments, founded in Boston in 1946, Fidelity International became independent of the US organisation in 1980, and is today owned mainly by management and members of the original founding family.

Our investment philosophy & approach

Building on active, bottom-up research, we create the competitive advantage that is able to deliver superior returns for our clients. Because markets are only semi-efficient, we act on intelligent insight:

• We have one of the largest global research capabilities with over 390 investment professionals and research staff around the world.
• We are committed to proprietary insights:
  • Our portfolio managers have access to in-house research, which is unavailable to others, on 90% of our fund holdings.
  • Our analysts carry out their research on the ground – visiting the shop floor, speaking to customers, competitors, suppliers, and independent experts to form conviction.
  • Over the course of a year, our portfolio managers and analysts attend more than 17,000 company meetings – or one every 10 minutes on average.
  • We commission over 250 bespoke surveys and reports a year to understand the market potential of companies’ product and service innovations.
• We believe that responsible investing - taking into account Environmental, Social and Governance aspects - is essential in protecting and enhancing returns to our clients.
• Our analysts work together across asset classes, e.g. combining insights from equity, credit macro and quantitative research, to form a 360° view on the health and prospects of companies.
• Our Manager Research team covers ~170 third party investment strategies which can be built into bespoke client portfolios.
• Our industry-leading technology platform gives our investment professionals mobile access to all research and reporting in one place. This includes risk monitoring, unique modelling, and forecasting tools. Portfolio Managers are also able to initiate trades anytime from anywhere for execution by our 24-7 global trading team.

This is how we find growth opportunities or income streams that have not been priced in by the market – allowing us to consistently add value for our clients.

How we run our business

Our portfolio managers are compensated on their long-term performance so that client and manager interests are aligned. The same is true for our management, whose shareholdings are for the duration of their careers with the company.

We are stewards of our clients’ money and have an important role to play in improving the governance of the companies in which we invest our clients’ money – helping companies become better companies.

We train many of our fund managers through our rigorous Portfolio Manager Academy programme. New portfolio managers initially manage pilot funds to test their ideas with our own money first. To our clients we offer tried and tested funds as a matter of principle.

It’s an approach that works: More than 200 awards across Europe and Asia in 2017 to date recognise the consistent strong achievements of our investment and client service teams.

*All data as at 31 December 2018