Hedge Funds

Fixed Income and Credit Research

We are the largest independent fixed income and credit research service provider that specialises in providing Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive set of fixed income and credit research support services to asset managers and investment banks. We have a team of over 200 credit research analysts; they are specialists in Emerging Markets and Developed Markets and, by asset class, in Distressed Debt, Sovereign, Sub-sovereign and Corporate and Financial issuers. The team combines qualitative and quantitative fundamental credit research with technological solutions that not only improve our speed to market but also provide actionable insights.

Our fixed income and credit research team is spread across geographies and credit ratings and even the unrated spectrum, including distressed issuers and workouts. The team is well supported by several best practices documents, Acuity’s proprietary training modules (CFA accredited), and access to long-serving in-house sector and asset class experts. This helps credit analysts to continuously upgrade their subject matter expertise and move up the value chain of fixed income and credit research.

Data Science

Global technology megatrends, regulatory developments, the competitive landscape and the rise of alternative data have been driving a paradigm shift in the capital markets ecosystem. Demand to find new avenues of alpha creation powered by data science techniques is at unprecedented levels. Acuity has been providing highly bespoke quantitative and technology-powered solutions to our buy-side and sell-side clients since 2005. To address growing demand in recent years, we launched a dedicated data science practice early in 2019 to provide unique and contextual insights based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

Private Equity Support

We provide end-to-end support to private equity (PE) firms on the investment side as well as horizontal support across middle-office and back-office functions.

On the front-end investment side, we provide comprehensive service offerings to support our PE clients across their investment lifecycles. We assist them from deal sourcing and target evaluation to portfolio monitoring and advisory.

We also support middle-office and back-office teams of PE firms by providing bespoke fundraising, investor relations and fund operations solutions. We assist clients from level 1 responses to activities such as RFPs/RFIs/DDQs, client presentations, factsheet generation, fund monitoring and fund valuation, and investor reporting. In addition to providing dedicated support on fund valuation, investor reporting and fund administration, we are experienced in integrating data operations into CRM systems, keeping onshore teams informed and flexible to respond to queries faster.

Portfolio Research and Operations

Our ‘Portfolio Research and Operations practice provides support to a number of asset managers on activities across the portfolio management value chain, including the following:

• Performance and risk analytics dashboards

• Performance measurement and attribution

• Risk metrics and analytics – beta, VaR, tracking error, correlation, risk attribution

• Analytics using third-party platforms

• Middle Office support

• Portfolio Operations

• Investment reporting

• Portfolio analytics maintenance work on platforms such as FactSet, Barra Aegis, Axioma, Wilshire Axiom, Bloomberg and POINT

• Portfolio Analytics and Reporting

We have distinguished ourselves from peers through our innovative products and client-centric and thought leadership approach in portfolio analytics and reporting and management. We enable clients to work on a "lean" model by offshoring analytical and technology requirements, increasing their bandwidth to focus on value-added strategies. We also help clients leverage our industry experience for superior portfolio risk analytics, efficient investment operations, enhanced reporting solutions, robust data integration and management, and bespoke applications, tools and dashboards. Our customers have experienced significant value from our strong capital markets knowledge coupled with data and technology capabilities to build innovative and tailored managed service solutions.

Index Solutions

As the focus shifts towards more passive strategies and ETFs, cost pressure increases, driving the need for innovative, market-relevant products and building infrastructure to support growth. Acuity Knowledge Partners is one of the leading global third-party vendor of index support, with more than 10 years of experience in supporting four of the world’s topindex providers. We offer end-to-end index support services under one roof – we provide index development and operations across strategy and benchmark indices with multi-asset-class coverage, thematic and strategy research, index marketing and client servicing.

By leveraging our broad suite of Index services and solutions, our clients are able to move up the value chain and overcome budgetary and research bandwidth constraints. We help our clients develop and test new and monetisable research ideas. Furthermore, our research and analytics expertise and ability to take on regular maintenance work free up their time to focus on higher-priority objectives.