ISS MI Case Study: Transforming DC Market Insights

Case Study

Global Investment Management Firm

To expand and drive growth in the defined contribution market, a leading global investment firm partnered with MarketPro Retirement, powered by BrightScope. As a result, our client accessed the data and insights necessary to inform their retail and institutional strategies.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

The Need for Greater DC Market Transparency

The DC market presents significant growth opportunities for asset managers and the advisors managing retirement plan assets. Unlike the retail space, however, the DC ecosystem lacks transparency—making it difficult to identify and target the right plans and the advisors who manage them.

Lack of transparency was a critical challenge for our client. Without reliable data, they were “flying blind,” unable to access the necessary sales reporting, market visibility, and channel insights needed to optimize distribution strategies, capture market opportunities, and grow share effectively.

SOLUTIONS ENGAGED

MarketPro Retirement NEXUS offered better insights into the sales and product data across the retirement landscape

Through it’s partnership with ISS MI, our client has greatly expanded it’s presence in the DC Market. In 2010, the firm became a founding member of MarketPro Retirement
NEXUS, a data-sharing consortium of asset managers, DC recordkeepers, and institutional investors. The goal was better insights into sales and product data across the retirement landscape.

MarketPro Retirement’s NEXUS network has provided our client improved segmentation and targeting, enhanced opportunity identification, optimized sales and distribution strategy, and the ability to accurately compensate sales teams.

Global Investment Management Firm

A leading global investment management firm sought to expand its penetration in the defined contribution (DC) market. The firm has fundamental and quantitative equity and fixed income strategies marketed through institutional sales and intermediary distribution teams..

Recognizing the need for better market intelligence, they partnered with MarketPro Retirement powered by BrightScope—an ISS Market Intelligence (MI) business—to access the data and insights necessary to inform their retail and institutional distribution strategies.

BENEFITS EXPERIENCED

Actionable data changed their approach to the DC business.

The unique industry datasets provided by MarketPro Retirement’s NEXUS network combined with enriched DC-focused advisor profiles provide a holistic view into the DC landscape, enabling deeper market intelligence and greater transparency for asset managers and other retirement-focused stakeholders.

Given the complexity of the retirement ecosystem and the uniqueness of this aggregated data set, the firm considers its participation in NEXUS essential. As the consortium has expanded to include more asset managers, recordkeepers, and institutions, the data has only grown more valuable.

This collaborative effort, driven by ISS MI’s deep financial services expertise, focuses on the continuous improvement of data, analytics, and insights. According to a senior business strategist at the firm, ISS MI has been more
than just a data provider:

The ISS MI team is “not simply maintaining a world-class solution is dedicated to continually improving it in a logical and thoughtful way, while incorporating member feedback to maintain its reputation as the premier solution within the retirement market.”

Flexible access to an unprecedented level of market data and analytics “was life changing” – altering how they approached the DC business. With DC plan data far exceeding what’s publicly available, members of the MarketPro Retirement NEXUS network gain unparalleled visibility into advisor-to-plan relationships, product allocations, and market share analysis across broker-dealers, RIAs, branches, and teams.

Moreover, a dedicated client service team supports them by customizing reports and analyses to meet specific business needs, rapidly responding with detailed answers to questions and data requests.

The ISS MI team provided flexible access to an unprecedented level of market data and analytics “was life changing” – altering how they approached the DC business.

MarketPro Retirement NEXUS

Move beyond the limitations of public and internal data and gain unparalleled visibility to advisor-to-plan relationships and market share analysis across advisors, branches, teams, RIAs, and broker-dealers.