Researching asset classes and new themes is crucial but complex, and often hindered by outdated data sources and tools. Many investment manager selectors and strategists still rely heavily on manual methods such as their inbox, search engines, conferences, sales calls and meetings. These channels can be time consuming, contain informational noise, be commercially charged, or even awkward. This makes it difficult to maintain continuous market oversight, and adapt quickly to market changes. Barriers such as scattered data sources, lack of centralised tools, and difficulty keeping track of market trends prevent institutional investors from maximising their KPIs.
To fully understand the value a global investment research platform for institutional investors, we'd like to bring it to life with practical use cases.
It's one thing to talk about centralised data and streamlined workflows, but it's another to see how these features solve daily challenges investors actually face.
These use cases will help institutional investors envision how RFPnetworks technology can fit into their specific workflows, deliver tangible outcomes, and support smarter, faster, more confident decision-making across their organisation. And ultimately develop smarter teams and robust portfolios.
The Problem: There always new investment ideas, themes, and asset classes being spun that claim to be transformational for portfolios. But discerning between the sales pitch and facts requires objective insights. When producing a comprehensive investment proposal for your board on these new ideas substantial research needs to be performed: Market assumptions, expected risk premiums, performance outlooks, and more must be collected from various sources, making the process tedious and prone to informational gaps.
What you need: To prepare a persuasive and objective proposal, selectors need a centralised hub where they can effortlessly aggregate, analyse, and compare critical market data and manager risk-return metrics. What can an investor expect in terms of performance, what risks will be taken, and what are the probabilisitc realities of an investment in this new idea, asset class or theme.
How our investment research tools helps strategists, selectors, investment boards and trustees: Our tools help strategists and investment manager selectors feed new investment ideas to the board, investment committees, and trustees. This can be done in the form of short briefing papers, longer analytical reports, or knowledge sharing meetings direct with specialised asset managers.
Interestingly, when these tools are also used by investment boards and trustees, the discussions and debates surrounding these proposals become more engaged. Everyone comes fully informed to the investment proposal meetings, prepared to challenge each other and reach more confident decisions.
Our tools streamline this knowledge building and insight sharing process so institutional investors can make swifter decisions and enter new markets before the crowds.
The Problem: Every year, 100s of new graduates come into the the investment management industry. Some choose to start their fresh career within an investment manager selection team. It's a fantastic role where they can learn about all aspects of managing a portfolio, but they will face a steep learning curve.
What you need: These young minds will need to complement their academic foundations with real life investment management industry knowledge, start building an asset manager network, work out who to speak to on which asset classes, rapidly absorb market history, understand various how performance is influenced, and stay current with market trends.
By acquiring knowledge, ambitious newcomers can quickly contribute to meetings and support their team. They can start to form opinions, learn how to structure their research efforts, and build contact points into the thought leaders on any asset class.
How our investment research tools helps rising stars in investment manager selection: When new selectors use our tools, they can accelerate their professional growth, contribute meaningfully with informed insights at meetings. By staying continuously updated through RFPnetworks, they quickly become valued, knowledgeable team members positioned for rapid advancement. The next rising stars in investment manager selection.
The Problem: Before initiating any investment manager search or RFP process, selectors continuously monitor the managers within each sub-asset class strategy that is relevant for their portfolio. The problem is that there is more to performance than just the numbers alone. And comparing a manager to an index of their stated benchmark does not provide enlightenment on why the result is what it is. There are 100s of possible quantitative and qualitative reasons why a track record is what it is.
Without that underlying detail, drawing comparative conclusions across a manager universe becomes a guessing game. Is it a good or bad track record? Compared to what or who? It could be a good track record for reasons you would not select that specific manager. Or a bad track record when compared to managers with a similar investment philosophy and risk profile, irrespective of the raw performance relative to a benchmark or index.
So before taking action in a portfolio, whether that be to replace an existing manager with a new manager, or diversify further across managers, proper benchmarking needs to take place. Without it, sub-optimal long lists will be created when a search becomes necessary.
What you need: Selectors need to be able to create cleaner peer groups of comparable managers for a specific index or benchmark. To do that with precision, they need tools and data that allow them to research any sub-asset class strategy methodically and objectively.
The point is that you never know when you will need to replace a manager who unexpectedly and suddenly no longer meets your performance needs or due diligence requirements. Or when you urgently need to diversify your multi-manager portfolio into new factor exposures in response to rapid market inflections. Or allocate to a new idea, asset class or trend.
Investment manager selectors need to ensure they are always prepared for an unexpected potential search.
How our investment manager research toolkits helps these selectors: Our investment manager research tools help asset manager selectors ensure they are always prepared for an unexpected or potential search. Our tools give them quantitative insights not found with investment manager performance databases. And qualitative insights that they can use to build highly granular, clean peer groups for any sub-asset class strategy, in private or public markets. Our users are always prepared to respond to any market dislocation, or manager event as they know the global best-in-class for a specific strategy.
Incomplete insights and manual processes slow down investment research which can impact manager selection in significant ways. This blog explores three practical use cases that highlight how RFPnetworks enables institutional investors to global investment research: from building investment proposals and accelerating junior talent, to cleaner investment manager benchmarking. The result? Smarter teams and optimal investment decisions.
With contributions from: Abigail Dahlan is a Product Specialist responsible for enhancing the user experience of our manager selection and investment manager clients. Thao Do is a Marketing Specialist responsible for creating new thought leadership to help our users enhance their knowledge of our products.
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