ETF Providers Editing and Proofreading Services

Exchange-traded funds are sold on the promise of simplicity, which makes their documentation unusually hard to write. The product is presented as a single ticker that tracks an index, while beneath it sit a replication method, a securities lending programme, a currency treatment, a distribution policy, a tax domicile and a spread that varies by time of day. Investors who believe they own the index and discover otherwise — because the fund lent stock, or sampled rather than replicated, or paid withholding tax the index did not — become complainants, and the disclosure that would have prevented it usually existed somewhere nobody read.

We edit what ETF providers produce — prospectuses and supplements, key information documents and factsheets, index methodology summaries and licensing disclosures, tracking difference and tracking error explanations, securities lending policies and revenue-sharing disclosures, product launch material and marketing collateral, market maker and authorised participant documentation, creation and redemption process explanations, tax and distribution guidance for investors, ESG and screening methodology disclosures for thematic products, adviser and platform education material, and regulatory filings and responses. Our editors check that the risk factors in the prospectus are reflected proportionately in the marketing, and that a term such as "physical replication" is explained rather than merely used.

Tracking difference is the disclosure that determines whether an investor's expectations are correctly set, and almost every fund handles it badly. Investors are told the fund tracks an index and are shown tracking error, which measures the volatility of the deviation rather than its size or direction. What they want to know is simpler: over a year, how far behind the index did I end up, and why. We rewrite these disclosures to state the realised tracking difference over several periods, then decompose it into the components an investor can understand — the ongoing charge, withholding tax on dividends that the index does not suffer, the cost of rebalancing, the drag or benefit from sampling, and the contribution from securities lending revenue, which is usually the only positive line and the one providers are least clear about. A fund that explains why it lags by 21 basis points rather than 7 is trusted more than one that reports a tracking error figure and leaves the investor to wonder.

Everything you send is treated in strict confidence, including pre-launch products, index licensing terms and unpublished performance. We are editors rather than investment or regulatory advisers, and nothing we do is investment advice; fund documents must be approved by your compliance function and, where required, your regulator. What we can do is make the writing exact and comprehensible to the investor it is aimed at.