How can I check fund availability?

You can see which contracts a group of funds can be bought through using the Availability link in the menu bar. This link is displayed on both the filtering and ranking-results pages.

Clicking on the Availability link displays a pop-up window which guides you through two steps. The first step is illustrated by the first screenshot below, and consists of telling the system which funds you want to check availability for.

Step 1: choosing the funds whose availability you want to check

The funds are listed in sorted/ranked order. In the example below, the grid has been sorted on 5-year past performance. Therefore, choosing the “top 3 funds” option would show the availability of the top 3 performers over the last 5 years.

Step 2: choosing the product type you want to use

When you click on the Next button, the system shows the second step as illustrated by the screenshot below:

You simply pick the type of product you want to buy the funds through: for example, an investment bond or ISA.

It may be useful to note that a wrap platform’s ISA is a good guide as to whether funds are generally available on the platform. In other words, if you want to see whether the funds “can be bought through XYZ”,the easiest way is to see if they can be bought through XYZ’s ISA.

The Availability matrix

Once you have chosen the funds and the product type, Synaptic Research displays a matrix showing whether each fund is available on each contract.

As in the screenshot below, all the contracts of the specified product type are shown down the right, and the selected funds are shown across the top. Each cell in the table then simply says Yes or No depending on whether the fund can be bought through the contract. (This is visually very similar to the audit trail.)