Fidelity Revamps Website to Highlight News

Seeing traffic on Yahoo’s finance website and Marketwatch.com burgeon, Fidelity Investments has decided to try its hand at financial news for itself, and is revamping its website as a result.

Not only will Fidelity offer insight into the markets in a real-time news section that will cull stories from 19 media sources, but it will offer a wide range of personal finance news and advice, including budgeting tips, retirement planning, commentary, insight into individual stocks and easy-to-view market indices.

“People want to be grounded in what’s happening, especially in times of market and economic uncertainty,” said Fidelity Senior Vice President Sean Belka, who is the firm’s online strategy chief. “People value Fidelity’s opinion and point of view, but at the same time, they wanted other viewpoints.

“By bringing independent personal finance information and real-time market insights to Fidelity.com, we can now provide investors with more of the information they need to effectively manage their financial lives in one online destination,” Belka continued.

Currently, 55 million households in the U.S. log onto a computer to check financial news, and that is projected to grow to 72 million by 2014. About 250,000 Fidelity customers currently go to the website to check on news and their accounts.

To oversee the six-month rollout for this project and future endeavors, Fidelity has formed a new company, Fidelity Interactive Content Services.