Demand for eDelivery of Prospectuses Surge at NewRiver

NewRiver, the industry leader for electronic compliance and intelligent document services for the securities brokerage and retirement industries, today announced significant volume improvement as new brokerage firms, individual variable annuity and retirement plan providers have selected Prospectus Express® for electronic delivery of what is traditionally paper-based mutual fund prospectuses. Leveraging Prospectus Express, these firms provide their investors with the most accurate and up to date online prospectus documents which enables them to reduce costly overhead related to paper document fulfillment while greatly improving delivery time. As the only Web-based SEC-compliant data warehouse, Prospectus Express allows investors to access an electronic online library of compliance documents for every open-end mutual fund, variable annuity, and variable life product sold in the United States.

NewRiver estimates that the brokerage industry delivered more than 60 million first dollar mutual fund prospectuses in 2006 either through electronic or traditional form, and serviced either directly or through industry-leading intermediaries. Three million of those were delivered through Prospectus Express at a savings of $1.00 to $1.50 per transaction. In addition, this is part of a larger trend as many brokerage firms seek to reduce costs even further through “paper off” initiatives that are enterprise-wide.

NewRiver’s growth in electronic document delivery is expected to double in 2007 as additional brokerage firms continue to promote e-delivery and as more and more firms are signing up for the first time. Recent ROI studies have found that firms seeking to maintain a competitive edge and lower the cost of compliance have rallied around the e-delivery model. For example, by adopting an electronic document delivery system, one of the nation’s largest mutual fund firms and a leading provider of company-sponsored retirement plan services, was able to realize a significant competitive advantage by reducing the annual fees for accounts that opt to receive documents via e-delivery. Another customer, one of the world's largest providers of financial services, has adopted NewRiver’s e-document library in order to drastically reduce the amount of paper-based prospectuses that need to be delivered to investors and intermediary firms.

“As the SEC continues to evaluate new and more efficient disclosure options such as the Interactive Data initiative, firms will continue to look to e-delivery solutions to improve productivity at the point of sale, increase operations efficiency in the back office, and generate meaningful ROI for their entire organization,” said Jeff Levering, Vice President, Corporate Development at NewRiver. “What we’re seeing is firms accelerating their efforts to offer electronic mutual fund and other prospectuses as a way to cost-effectively improve investors’ experience while offering a real alternative to the environmental impact of paper-only.”