Russell launches ‘Helping Advisors’ mobile edition to enhance advisor/client conversations

New version of HelpingAdvisors.com optimized for iPad® gives advisors quick access to tools including Economic Indicators Dashboard and Business Cycle Index

Seattle, WA — November 17, 2011 — Russell Investments has introduced an iPadⁱ®-enabled edition of its Helping Advisors website that facilitates access to key tools including the Economic Indicators Dashboard, the Business Cycle Index and the Helping Advisors blog. The new version, which went live this month, addresses advisors’ growing interest in having robust and easy-to access tools and information immediately available at their fingertips.

“In 2010, 64% of asset managers polled by Cerulli Associates indicated that they planned to introduce downloadable applications for mobile devices on advisor websites,”ⁱⁱ said Timothy Noonan, Managing Director, Capital Market Insights, for Russell’s U.S. advisor-sold business. “In a similar vein, we developed our iPad-optimized version of Helping Advisors in direct response to feedback we were hearing from financial advisors – that mobile computing devices help them meet their client needs more rapidly.”

Since its launch in 2009, Russell’s Helping Advisors site has grown to generate more than 5,000 visits per month and nearly 185,000 visitors since its launch. This has paralleled a steady increase in mobile device traffic, and in October alone, mobile device traffic made up 10% of all visits to the site. The new version of Helping Advisors makes the useful content elements from the site readily available for advisors’ use in conversations with clients, or while on-the-go.

The new version features several of the most popular components of the Helping Advisors site, including:

• The Economic Indicators Dashboard, developed by Russell to help advisors evaluate the economy in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, which provides a snapshot of conditions in the market and economy relative to their typical-long term ranges.
• The Business Cycle Index, which forecasts the strength of economic expansion or recession in the coming months along with forecasts for other prominent economic measures.
• The Helping Advisors blog, which features insight on the markets, practice management guidance and talking points for having more meaningful client conversations.

“Being in sync in terms of technology is just one more way that advisors can engage and work effectively with clients, and so they are increasingly turning to tablet and mobile devices instead of paper to deliver an integrated client experience in a more efficient way,” said Noonan. “Interfaces like the new Helping Advisors version allow advisors to provide clients with high touch, in-the-moment context in the midst of ongoing conversations given the short term challenges of market volatility and the longer term ones of retirement income planning.”

About Russell

Russell Investments is an independent, global financial services firm that provides strategic advice, investment solutions, implementation services and global performance benchmarks that are customized to meet the unique needs of institutional investors, Financial Advisors and individuals. Celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2011, 25 years in Sydney and Tokyo and 15 years in the Netherlands, Russell has pioneered innovations that have come to define many of the practices that are standard in the investment world today, and has four decades of experience researching and selecting money managers globally.

Russell has about $137 billion in assets under management (as of 9/30/11) and works with 2,300 institutional clients, 530 independent distribution partners and millions of individual investors globally. As a consultant to some of the largest pools of capital in the world, Russell has $2 trillion in assets under advisement (as of 12/31/2010) and traded $1.4 trillion last year through its implementation services business. The Russell Global Indexes calculate over 50,000 benchmarks daily covering 63 countries and more than 10,000 securities.

Founded in 1936, Russell is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, USA and has offices in Amsterdam, Auckland, Chicago, London, Melbourne, Milan, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo and Toronto. For more information about how Russell helps to improve financial security for people, visit www.russell.com.

Contacts:
Jordan McKerney, 206-505-1858
Elizabeth Shapiro, 718-875-7606

i iPad® is a registered trademark of Apple Inc., and is used in this presentation for illustrative purposes only.

ii "The Cerulli Edge® U.S. Asset Management Edition." Issue 167. Cerulli Associates. July 2011.

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