Overview: The purpose of this article is to guide users through understanding and configuring watch list triggers within their Fiduciary Focus Toolkit. This includes details and instruction for understanding the use cases, configuration, and implementation of these sets of criteria to best monitor and screen investments within their client account(s).
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What happens when a trigger is applied
Related features and resources
What is a Watch List Trigger?
A watch list trigger is a set of rules you define, based on investment data points and thresholds, that automatically determines whether a fund or investment should be placed on a watch list or (optionally) flagged for removal. When an investment fails the criteria you have defined, it is flagged automatically, removing the need for manual review of every holding.
Why use Watch List Triggers?
- Save time: Automatically evaluate hundreds of holdings against your criteria without manual analysis.
- Improve accuracy: Eliminate inconsistency by applying the same rules every time data is refreshed.
- Support your fiduciary process: Document and demonstrate a repeatable monitoring methodology.
- Client-ready output: Trigger results flow directly into PDF reports you can share with clients.
Please Note: Your Broker-Dealer may have already configured default triggers for you. Check your account before building one from scratch, as you may be ready to go right away.
Types of Triggers
System Triggers (Defaults)
System triggers are pre-built triggers provided either by Broadridge or configured by your firm's administrator. These are designed to give you a ready-to-use starting point that reflects common industry standards or your firm's specific investment policy requirements. These show in blue and are unable to be removed.
Custom Triggers
If no default trigger has been assigned, the following will help you choose the right trigger type and criteria before you begin building.
- Review the report examples below to understand how trigger results appear in client-facing reports
- Review Available Data Points
Custom triggers are triggers you build yourself using criteria you define. You can create one trigger for all investments or multiple triggers with different criteria to serve different investment types including Active, Passive Money Market/Stable Value, and Target Date. For example, you might create one trigger for actively managed funds and a separate trigger for passive or index funds.
Trigger vs. Custom Score: What is the Difference?
These are essentially the same thing with different labels for different purposes.
Trigger: Internal facing feature in the software. Flags an investment for the watch list based on pass/fail rules. The end result is a watch list status. Best used for monitoring to identify investments that need attention prior to creating a report.
Custom Score: External facing label that shows on reports for your clients to see. Displays a numeric or weighted score for ranking investments based on the setup of the trigger. The output is a score value used for comparison or ranking. Appears in research screens, proposals, and comparative reports.
How To Set Up a Trigger
Before you begin: If your firm has provided a default system trigger, you may not need to complete these steps. Confirm with your administrator.
To set up your own trigger, follow the below steps:
- Navigate to your Fiduciary Focus Toolkit and click Settings (gear icon at top right side of screen), then Watch List Triggers
- Click "+ New Trigger" to start from scratch or copy an existing trigger
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Choose watch and remove rules: You can choose if you want your trigger to assign a watch and/or remove status based on prior quarter trends in the underlying criteria.
- Select your trigger type and threshold:
- Required criteria must be met for the trigger to pass. If any one of the required criteria fail, the trigger as a whole will fail.
- Flexible criteria operates on a chosen pass/fail threshold for the number of criteria that are allowed to fail before the trigger as a whole will fail. You can use one or both of these in your trigger. If you are trying to create an equal-weighted trigger, i.e. must pass 8 of 12, create only flexible criteria.
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Weighted trigger types allow you to assign a level of importance or ‘weight’ to each criteria to build a 100 Point Score. This type also requires you to select a threshold to define if the trigger passes or fails.
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Select your data criteria: Choose the metrics and thresholds that will determine watch list placement, such as performance vs. peers, expense ratio, or manager tenure. Each data point can have an additional layer of trending data built-in to determine if that criteria fails by looking at past quarters. You can also set Null Values to “Pass” or “Fail”. This can be useful when evaluating investments with shorter track records where you may not necessarily want the new investment to fail the 10 year return criteria, for example, if it doesn’t have a 10 year return yet.
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Publish and name your trigger: Use a descriptive name that reflects its purpose, for example: Passive Fund Monitoring. These labels are for internal use only and will not apply to client-facing reports. Watch list triggers cannot be applied without being Published. Save for later will create only a draft that will allow you to come back and edit, but you will not be able to use it in that state.
- Apply to your client: With this created, anytime you now create a client and assign a policy you will see your trigger available to apply to your clients. Triggers are applied as part of the Investment Policy configuration within clients. To learn more about the Investment Policy process, click here.
To learn more about applying watch list triggers for multiple clients at once, click here.
When importing clients from one of our Data Integration Providers, the user will be prompted to select a watch list trigger. To learn more about importing data from a Data Integration Provider, click here.
What Happens when a Trigger is Applied?
Once a trigger is applied to an account or portfolio, the system continuously evaluates your client holdings against the trigger criteria:
- New holdings added to a client account are automatically evaluated against the trigger criteria.
- Quarterly data updates cause all holdings to be re-evaluated with no manual action required.
- Watch list status is tracked over time, giving you a historical record of when investments were flagged or removed.
What if I need to change my trigger?
Once published and no longer saved as a draft, a trigger is locked and the underlying criteria cannot be change. If a mistake was made, your methodology has evolved, or you were simply just testing, a new trigger must be created and published to reflect the new methodology you would like to utilize. Users are able to copy existing triggers to save time. This can be done using the three dots to the right of the trigger you wish to copy.
Where Trigger Results Appear
- Monitoring Reports (primary use): Displays watch list status, flagged investments, and criteria detail in client-ready PDF reports.
- Proposals: Helps evaluate and document the suitability of proposed investments.
- Investment Policy Statements (IPS): Aligns monitoring criteria with the investment policy you have defined for a client.
- Investment Research: Supports screening and analysis of individual funds.
Report Examples
Investment to Watch are prominent talking points in summary sections and many other sections. The example here shows an equal weighted score with 10 data points. These 10 data points, for example, would be setup as ‘flexible’ criteria in a trigger.
Underlying criteria can be showing in several ways to explain how an equal weighted or 100-point score works. Here, underlying criteria are showing as passing or failing(red) with each contributing one point towards the score of 10:
Similarly, a 100 point score can show ‘weights’ on each data point that contribute to a score out of 100:
Coming in Q3 2026: Custom Status Labels and Colors
In an upcoming release, you will be able to apply custom status labels and colors to weighted triggers. This enhancement will allow you to:
- Replace default watch list labels with terminology that matches your firm's language
- Color-code watch list statuses for faster visual identification in reports
- Further personalize client-facing output to align with your brand and process
Related Features and Resources
Custom Fund Lists (CFL): Learn how to build and manage custom fund lists that work alongside triggers by allowing you to batch change actions. Coming in June 2026
To better understand how to manually override or adjust watch list status when needed for your clients, click here.
Add context and commentary to flagged investments directly within the platform by utilizing investment notes. To learn more, click here.
Configure your monitoring reports to display trigger results effectively. To learn more about custom report templates, click here.