Best New Data Product: S&P Global Market Intelligence

In a fiercely competitive market, a deep understanding of investment strategies and performance is invaluable for buy-side funds, and S&P Global Market Intelligence has set out to help firms stay ahead of the market with its Portfolio Analytics offering, which placed the vendor in top spot in the vote for Best New Data Product. 

Launched last year, S&P Global Market Intelligence’s Portfolio Analytics tool leverages data from S&P Global and combines it with clients’ own content for equity performance analysis and reporting. The new web-based platform offers users improved insight into the investment process, and the ability to assess daily performance and create custom reports to communicate and attribute performance. 

Ruben Falk, global head of investment management at S&P Global Market Intelligence, says one of the benefits to clients is that Portfolio Analytics is integrated with the Alpha Factor Library, which helps fuel systematic investment strategies. “Over the years we’ve seen a move from active to passive strategies as the industry has become more competitive, and there has been increased pressure on fees,” he says, explaining that these tend to be more systematic, factor-based “smart beta” strategies.

The Alpha Factor Library, a proprietary collection of global equity selection signals, includes more than 580 alpha factors for over 40,000 companies in 90 countries. The inclusion of the alpha factors in the Portfolio Analytics offering allows clients to describe their performance and characteristics, says Falk, who emphasizes the importance of this for systematic managers who want to communicate performance and portfolio characteristics, and traditional managers who are increasingly competing with smart beta strategies. “Having that library integrated is unique and increasingly relevant to all types of fund managers,” he says.

By the end of the year, customers will also see integration with the real-time desktop as the Capital IQ desktop, legacy SNL desktop and ratings and research desktop are all gradually integrated into the market intelligence desktop to provide a web-based real-time dashboard for portfolio monitoring. Falk says that the integration—already in the beta phase—“extends the applicability of the product from portfolio attribution and reporting to real-time monitoring.”

The desktop will also have integration with MSCI Barra risk models, which will help clients with risk management and risk forecasting, and Falk says other developments on the road map include transaction-based attribution and enhanced coverage of local benchmarks. “We need to get into smaller local market benchmarks as well,” he says.

Read more about the IMD/IRD Awards 2018 winners