In the midst of historical volatility, investment managers are looking for every edge to improve returns while simultaneously managing liquidity and overall counterparty and market risks.

It isn't easy - this is particularly evident as managers seek to identify differentiated, data-driven, alpha-generating trade ideas. These ideas are set against a backdrop of costly and time-consuming challenges including portfolio finance and funding requirements, daily cash and liquidity positioning, minimizing collateral and margin posted while meeting all agreement terms, optimizing a multitude of rates, and controlling counterparty exposure and risks.

To respond to the demands that investment managers are facing, IHS Markit has teamed up with Hazeltree to provide a differentiated securities finance dataset that is relevant and value accretive to any alternative asset manager.

For more insight on the collaboration and how it helps managers, we spoke with Paul Wilson, managing director and head of Securities Finance at IHS Markit, and Sameer Shalaby, president & CEO at Hazeltree.

Why are IHS Markit and Hazeltree joining forces?

Paul: The collaboration between our firms creates a unique opportunity to marry our collective data sets. As we dug deeper into our clients' treasury and portfolio finance challenges, it became clear that Hazeltree possesses a comprehensive and integrated suite of products that allow investment managers to evolve towards treasury and operational excellence, replacing spreadsheets and bespoke systems. In particular, against the COVID-19 work-from-anywhere evolving operational model, enterprise-scale treasury and portfolio finance technology has never been more relevant.

We are uniting IHS Markit's leading securities finance data set with Hazeltree's unique alternative data set, as well as Hazeltree's treasury and technology expertise, to provide investment managers with trading insights that drive alpha generation and secure the cash and financing to fund trading activities. IHS Markit has been impressed with Hazeltree's unique approach, rooted in expertise and experience.

IHS Markit's confidence resulted in a strategic investment in Hazeltree in October 2019 to support its acquisition of Enso Financial Analytics, a provider of treasury and data analytics to alternative investment managers, from CME Group.

What will the alliance deliver to capital markets and investment professionals?

Sameer: Given the rich functionality that resides between IHS Markit and Hazeltree, there are many facets of the enhanced offering that are brought together. In the short-term, we are focused on two core workstreams:

1. Seamless integration of Hazeltree Data Insights into the IHS Markit Securities Finance data suite - this will enable front-office professionals and quantitative traders to benefit from this enhanced and unique data set to generate alpha.
2. Connecting IHS Markit clients with Hazeltree so they can benefit from our comprehensive treasury and portfolio finance suite of products.

Over time, we will explore additional synergies to further integrate various products together, enabling our mutual clients to benefit from a seamless experience.

How are primary markets going to benefit from this collaboration?

Paul: Based on what we hear from our customers, one of the biggest challenges for investment managers is identifying new alternative data sets with sustained signals strength to provide actionable trading opportunities. This is especially highlighted during volatile markets, such as those we are experiencing today.

To that end, by working with Hazeltree, we are helping trading professionals gain access to a new and unique dataset that we strongly believe can assist in identifying alpha generation opportunities whilst also assisting in optimizing portfolio funding and financing.

Is this expanded data set available today to IHS Markit clients?

Paul: Yes, at this time the expanded data set is in full production and being used by several IHS Markit clients with positive feedback of its predictive value.

Sameer: Hazeltree is about innovative approaches and marrying our unique alternative data set with IHS Markit's comprehensive data and significant market presence will deliver immediate insight for trading to investment managers of all sizes. We look forward to future opportunities to integrate our various products together to offer clients a seamless trading and operations experience in using our respective products.

For more information on IHS Markit Securities Finance Data Insights, view our product fact sheet, or email us at: sales@ihsmarkit.com.

For more information on treasury and portfolio finance solutions from Hazeltree, visit www.hazeltree.com, or email us at: info@hazeltree.com.