Dreyfus Corp.s director of e-business has given himself a lengthy to-do list for the mutual fund provider.
Sean Foley, who left New York Life Insurance Co. to take the newly created position at Dreyfus, is focusing for now on merging www.lionsales.com, a site for investment professionals, into the retail mutual fund portal dreyfus.com. Once that is done, he will get to work upgrading the combined site to boost sales and minimize service inquiries.
Mr. Foley said his team will eliminate overlap and keep the best elements of each site. Added features he plans include a frequently-asked-questions area, while improvements will include simpler arrangement of information so that users can find what they need without having to troll through a lot of irrelevant screens.
Another near-term initiative is to provide performance figures and other timelier information about the Dreyfus fund family. This is crucial in a volatile market, Mr. Foley said.
He also wants the site to have better transactional capabilities. Right now, the intermediary and retail sites provide little more than product and performance information and market commentary.
Dreyfus, a New York-based subsidiary of Pittsburghs Mellon Financial Corp., plans to add a feature that would let intermediaries look at their own accounts with Dreyfus online, and will consider letting retail investors buy mutual funds by Internet.
The company also has an online brokerage, edreyfus.com. Mr. Foley wants to tweak that site but said his top priority is the mutual fund sites.
Mr. Foley, who had a similar job at New York Lifes investment management arm, said he couldnt say when any of dreyfus.coms new features will appear.
