Despite the uncertain and challenging couple of years the global pandemic brought upon us, we at FA Solutions have persistently kept pursuing our mission – improving the world of investment management through superior automated technology. However this year, we wanted to go even further making a wider positive impact on society and the whole world.
For us as a company, 2021 was a year of remarkable product development, accelerating our growth and internationalization with fascinating new clients and growing our team with many skillful new colleagues.
We welcomed and onboarded new clients and partners from the Nordics and Central Europe, the Gulf Region, Hong Kong, and, for the first time ever, the United States. We increased the transparency and trustworthiness of our company and the solutions we offer by being certified with the ISAE 3402 Type 2 (SOC 1) assurance audit report. We also took our product, the FA Platform, to the next level with quarterly new version releases, including several new features and improvements, making our clients’ daily work easier. For example, see this year’s updates to our Fund Management functionality or check how a new developer tool in our FA DEVELOPER version 1.1, Notebooks, can benefit our customers.
We are genuinely happy and grateful to have been able to prosper and grow like this despite the challenging times and positively impact the industry. But this year, we wanted to focus even more on leveraging our positive impact wider in society.
In spring 2021, FA Solutions started sponsoring the football club Grankulla IFK Fotboll rf. As a result, the club’s football hall in Kauniainen, Finland, was named FA Solutions Arena. GrIFK Fotboll offers an opportunity to have football as a hobby to hundreds of people, primarily children and teenagers. Via this cooperation, we want to give back to the community and build a solid base for our future society by supporting children’s health and well-being.
But we don’t want to stop there. FA Solutions will also help GrIFK Fotboll to collect and analyze data to measure and increase their SROI (Social Return on Investment) with the model developed by UEFA (The Union of European Football Associations) in cooperation with European universities.
According to the results of the first SROI calculation round, the annual benefit GrIFK Fotboll’s activity brings to Finnish society is 5.5 million euros. This number includes €2.4M of direct economic effects, €1.9M of savings in healthcare costs, and €1.2M of social benefits. We at FA Solutions are delighted and proud to be enabling this kind of positive impact on society.
Also, when talking about making an impact in the finance industry, you cannot avoid talking about ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance) and ESG investing. All of us, individuals, companies, and other organizations, have to take responsibility and sustainability into account in our actions to contribute positively to the world, and it seems that nowadays we really want to do that since ESG investments are peaking at record levels.
However, measuring ESG fund performance is still causing headaches due to the lack of standards and regulation in the measurement and reporting of ESG products and funds, alongside the fact that ESG funds aren’t actually performing as well as they are hyped up to be.
This means that Wealth Management firms could face an increasing amount of rebalancing hurdles. We are pleased to say our product FA Platform can help solve this issue as well, as you can find out in the article by our Member of the Board & Partner Hannes Helenius on WealthManagement.com.
This 2021 year has been quite a ride! The FA Solutions Team warmly wishes you and your family cheerful holidays and a Happy New Year. May the season of joy fill your home with love and light.
We are looking forward to more great moments to share with all of you in 2022.
With lot’s of love, the FA Team
