IMD & IRD Awards 2022: Best research provider—S&P Global Market Intelligence

OVERVIEW

Having access to high-quality research and information is critical for financial professionals when making investment decisions. Information needs to be reliable, timely and easy to access. S&P Global Market Intelligence addresses these requirements with its research offering, which draws on 1,900 investment research providers, a database of 40 million research reports and Excel models, as well 936,000 credit ratings research reports.

THE SOLUTION

The firm’s research strategy is multi-faceted, encompassing a range of offerings. Key brands and products include:

• 451 Research: A technology research group that provides clients with a holistic view of innovation across the IT landscape. The team publishes more than 3,000 reports annually, helping clients to develop business cases, create plans and execute other key tasks. 
• Aftermarket Research: A library that provides access to a database of aftermarket analyst research with more than 40 million reports available from more than 1,900 contributing firms 
• S&P Global Quantamental Research: A research team comprising ex-buy-side analysts and PhDs with over 130 years of cumulative industry experience. Each research piece leverages Xpressfeed, S&P Global Market Intelligence’s data feed solution, to make use of the full history of datasets and uncover new insights. 
• S&P Global Market Intelligence News: A news service focusing on the events and trends that drive the global economy. Journalists produce data-driven articles tracking the developments of thousands of companies worldwide and digging into cross-sector themes such as ESG, credit risk and energy transition.

Over the last year, S&P Global Market Intelligence has added new content to its platform. Examples include the addition of Macquarie, Needham & Co., William Blair and Shore Capital as contributors to the Aftermarket Research library, making more ESG content available on the platform, and providing more detail on how ratings are calculated for banking, insurance and non-financial corporate entities. There has also been a focus on increasing the number of local language publications available, while S&P Global Ratings research is now provided in Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese, as well as English. 

WHAT’S TO COME

S&P Global Market Intelligence will continue the delivery of its credit portal on S&P Capital IQ Pro. It has been migrating clients to it since August 2021 and is now accelerating the migration and adding new clients directly to the new version. The new RatingsDirect product enables clients to access research and credit rating information through the flagship portal, which means they will be able to stay on the same platform to access several types of content. It also means the information can presented to users at a much faster pace. The firm is also in the process of delivering a new search engine, Omni Search, developed by Kensho. It is already available on the latest beta version and returns both entity and research results.

WHY THEY WON

The ability to source, consume and digest high-quality research is fundamental to the overall performance of pretty much any buy-side firm, needs that S&P Global Market Intelligence excels at satisfying thanks to its multi-faceted research offering comprising: After Market Research, Quantamental Research, 451, Panjiva, and credit ratings research, available via its RatingsDirect and RatingsXpress platforms. The sheer breadth and depth of the firm’s research offerings makes it a true heavyweight in this industry and one that will no doubt be difficult to unseat in this category in future awards.