Scientific Beta

IPE: "ERI Scientific Beta, a smart-beta platform, has announced partnerships with Morgan Stanley and Amundi in a bid to enhance its platform for investors looking to move into the latest investment strategy. The provider, part of the EDHEC-Risk Institute, a Paris-based academic body, said the agreements would help develop its aim to become the first provider of a smart-beta platform."

IPE 18/02/2014

(...) ERI Scientific Beta, a smart-beta platform, has announced partnerships with Morgan Stanley and Amundi in a bid to enhance its platform for investors looking to move into the latest investment strategy. The provider, part of the EDHEC-Risk Institute, a Paris-based academic body, said the agreements would help develop its aim to become the first provider of a smart-beta platform. Smart beta, the systematic and rules-based strategy to equity investment, which focuses on exposure to beta factors, has been growing in popularity among institutional investors. In response, EDHEC-Risk Institute launched its platform in the spring of 2013, which it said provided complete transparency on the methodology and compositions of the indices. It also developed a Smart Beta 2.0 risk-management approach, which followed ERI Scientific Beta’s aim to provide the index industry with more academic rigour, transparency and risk control – all at a lower cost. With Morgan Stanley, the firm said, it has signed a global replication license, which will see the US bank, and fellow index provider, replicate the smart-beta indices and have access to the evaluation tools and tracking methodology used within the indices. With Amundi, the French asset manager, ERI Scientific Beta said the pair had agreed a strategic partnership that will see the construction of smart-beta passive investment solutions for institutional clients. (...)