As difficult as it may be to decide to divest a manager, the next decision – where to reinvest that money – can be an even bigger challenge. Without the right tools, the process to find a replacement manager can be very time consuming; it is an involved process with internal resources for exhaustive research and engaging with a consultant that can take months, if not quarters to complete. When exogenous events prompt an unexpected redemption, the situation can become tense, especially when a decision needs to be made immediately to avoid further losses. How do you find a set of backup managers to a fund you’re already invested in? How do you find similar funds with a strong track record?

Our new module, Similyzer™ is a comprehensive holdings-based comparison tool that makes the manager selection process a lot faster and easier, helping you save time and money. It speeds up the standard process by narrowing down the replacement manager universe to a more manageable list, identifying several candidate funds that could replace an existing allocation. 

Stephen Beinhacker, Global Head of Manager Research at SEI, told us that “Similyzer™ has been a big time saver. It quickly and easily sheds an interesting light on managers’ similarities and differences. Before this tool, it simply took too long to identify manager-specific attributes and now I can dig as deeply as I need to find gems of information.” 

 Some of the things you can do with Similyzer™:

• Quickly search for similarities and differences on any subset of 130+ factors for all 28,000+ funds in Morningstar and eVestment databases.
• Gain a very focused understanding of how funds are similar and how they differ from one another.
• Identify which of your funds are effectively just duplicating another fund’s exposure.
• Find replacement funds that match the traits you want and filter on factors, ESG, performance, etc.
• Find funds that naturally hedge your portfolio.

Shown below is a hypothetical example of an asset owner’s search for managers that might replace their allocation to Fisher Investments’ All World Equity Portfolio, showing the top six funds and how similar they are on each of our Style Groups. This report drills down to reveal similarities on individual sub-factors and numerous other analytics can be added to the comparison like historical performance and risk numbers.