ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--eVestment Alliance, a global provider of institutional investment data intelligence and analytic solutions, today announced that it has expanded its relationship with Towers Watson to become an important hedge fund data collection partner. Towers Watson is a global investment consultant which has a specialist hedge fund team of 20 people with assets under advice of around $15bn. The move paves the way for the provision of comprehensive hedge fund intelligence to eVestment’s core client base of institutional investment consultants as well as providing a platform for hedge funds to more effectively market themselves to institutional investors.
Craig Baker, Global Head of Research at Towers Watson Investment, said: “Over the last decade, the institutional investor community has shown increased interest in hedge funds as an investment vehicle, which has sparked strong demand for due diligence and reporting processes that can efficiently produce current and accurate data on a global scale.
“As data collection and reporting becomes more costly, complex and time consuming, finding solutions that can streamline the process have become a priority for asset managers, as well as consultants. We have been advising clients on direct hedge fund portfolio allocations for almost ten years and have found the capture of consistent and accurate data on the wider hedge fund universe an ongoing challenge. By partnering with eVestment in this way we aim to support the construction of a robust and informative database that is open to all institutional investors and their advisors. This industry-wide effort should ensure a more efficient way for managers to provide their information to more institutional investor groups and their advisers rather than each of us continuing to run separate databases. Through such capture we believe that the cost to the end user will also decrease while the quality and consistency of the information is significantly improved.”
As the premier online database housing the most comprehensive global data available on institutional asset managers, eVestment will leverage the same web-based, self-reporting data collection technology and processes to provide institutional investment consultants and investors insightful and accurate hedge fund intelligence. Expansion into the hedge fund asset class will provide a channel to assist all global investment consultants and advisors in their selection of hedge funds to manage pension, endowment and other institutional portfolios.
“Like the state of traditional asset class data reporting when eVestment launched 11 years ago, hedge fund intelligence is fragmented and lacks effectiveness for decision makers and asset allocators in the institutional investment community,” said eVestment CEO and Founder Jim Minnick. “Our expanded partnership with Towers Watson is a product of the efficiency that results from having a high level functionality on our platform, combined with the accuracy of data yielded by our self-reporting system. The expansion of our data set to include self-reported hedge fund intelligence provides the hedge fund management community with a single platform to properly market themselves to institutional investment community.
“The database will provide hedge fund managers with a means to efficiently distribute performance, product and investment strategy data directly to leading institutions and consultants. In addition, eVestment will serve as a steward for the expanded data set, by offering hedge fund managers the ability to vet which institutions and consultants can have access to the self-reported information.”
About eVestment Alliance (www.evestment.com)
eVestment Alliance (eVestment) is a global provider of institutional investment data intelligence and analytic solutions. eVestment delivers extensive data through robust, user-friendly products, with an unparalleled commitment to client service. Its diverse clients include leading investment consultants, asset managers, plan sponsors and others among the world’s foremost financial organizations. eVestment was named the “Most Influential Database” by FundFire and ranked first in the top 10 list of “Must Be In” databases by Money Management Letter and iisearches. The company was founded in 2000 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia with offices in London, Sydney, Hong Kong.