InvestorCOM acquires Distributech and takes financial services industry online with digital communications

NOVEMBER 10, 2015 – TORONTO, ON: InvestorCOM Inc. announced today that it has acquired Distributech Inc., formally combining staff and operations of the two organizations to better service their collective customers. This acquisition is the culmination of several years of working together and reflects the founders’ desire to better align the companies’ strategies, interests and ownership. The Toronto-based company which also has operations in Brantford, Ontario helps its clients create and distribute their communications online and through traditional channels. The move to digital leads to better communications and major cost savings.

“Most companies struggle with the challenges of migrating their communications from print to electronic delivery channels,” says David Reeve, CEO, InvestorCOM (https://investorcom.com). “Ultimately, the answer is digital communications as opposed to paper-based communications, but many organizations err in thinking it’s an either-or situation. It isn’t. The idea is not paperless, but less paper.”

Reeve and Anthony Boright, who is President, InvestorCOM, are entrepreneurs who for years have served some of the biggest players in Canada’s financial services industry. They joined forces to launch InvestorCOM which serves the broad investor communications needs of banks, insurance companies, asset managers and investment dealers. InvestorCOM leverages technology to help its clients identify cost savings in their client communications. It has recently identified $3.5 million in savings per year through an e-migration strategy for one of Canada’s leading financial services companies, and it has developed a hosted publishing solution to help asset managers produce and update thousands of disclosure documents through an automated process.

Says Reeve: “Surprisingly, less than 10 per cent of documents in the financial services industry are delivered electronically today, but for many of our clients the next three to four years will see an opportunity to move this to 50 per cent and that’s where we come in.”

InvestorCOM is a combination of an outsourcing company started by Reeve, and a technology company started by Boright.

For over 20 years Reeve has led Distributech which transforms document and business processes to optimize service and cost. By streamlining processes, clients reduce consumption of paper, postage and courier costs. Services include data processing, web development and hosting, print production, order fulfillment, and warehousing.

Prior to that, Reeve was at IBM Canada Ltd. where his role included managing the company’s relationship with CIBC.

In 2003 Boright founded VAULT Solutions, which helped its clients compose documents required for the ever-increasing disclosure and regulatory environment, and also helped with their needs for document delivery, compliance, reporting, and analytics. In 2010 that evolved to another company specializing in point-of-sale (POS) investor disclosure. The first company in Canada to respond to emerging point-of-sale regulations affecting mutual fund disclosure, it has grown by 200 per cent per year over the past five years and today licenses its Fund Facts document-delivery platform to IIROC (Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada)
and to MFDA (Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada) dealers and their advisors. Before that, Boright had designed some of the first websites for major Canadian banks.

Online banking aside, most communications in the financial services industry are still in the form of paper. This includes investor communications – customer statements, trade confirmations, disclosure documents, bills and compliance forms to satisfy regulatory requirements, etc.

Says Boright: “InvestorCOM will address all those areas, automate and streamline document-based processes for our clients, and handle our client needs for marketing content management. There are three major trends in the marketplace today – a migration from paper to electronic communications, increasing regulation, and a growing need for technology innovation and the cost savings it delivers. InvestorCOM is the only integrated technology and services company that delivers solutions that address these trends.”

InvestorCOM will help:

• Asset managers and financial advisors leverage digital channels for their investor communications which reduces their costs for printing, mailing, typesetting, and manual activity;
• Financial services companies with their compliance and regulatory needs by putting thousands of their disclosure documents online;
• Financial services clients better serve their own customers with online communications that improve financial literacy. This includes document composition, delivery, compliance, reporting and analytics.

Reeve and Boright, both successful entrepreneurs, anticipate annual growth of 25 per cent with InvestorCOM.

For more information contact:
Jerry Amernic
jerry@jerryamernic.com
416-284-0838