S&P Global Market Intelligence won the 'best buy-side managed data service' category in the 2023 Buy-Side Technology Awards run by WatersTechnology.
In this Q&A,WatersTechnology speaks to Kevin Guy, Head of Managed Data Services for iLEVEL at S&P Global Market Intelligence, about the service, its benefits, and key differentiators.

WatersTechnology: It seems that these days everybody's offering a managed data service of sorts. Can you give me a sense of what S&P Global's iLEVEL Managed Data Services is, what it does, and what the benefits are to buy-side firms subscribing to the service?

Kevin Guy, Head of Managed Data Services for iLEVEL, S&P Global Market Intelligence: iLEVEL Managed Data Services centralizes critical information about clients' private investment portfolios using the collective intelligence of data ingestion technology and human-in-the-loop processing. Our service specializes in the processing of financial and operational reporting from fund managers, portfolio companies and borrowers, enabling clients to achieve operational alpha and data driven insights across private markets. We provide a full-service offering that allows clients to set it and forget it. Our team functionalizes the end-to-end private markets data workflow into the following core components: source document collection, data extraction, data review, standardization, exception management, and service delivery. Through a holistic approach, our service leverages best-in-breed technology at each step of the process and complimentary subject matter expertise resulting in faster data processing and increased data coverage.

The primary benefit to our clients is that our team lifts the operational burden of sourcing and processing data so they can focus on gaining deeper insights and executing analysis. In fact, based on a recent survey of iLEVEL Services clients, the top two functions where our team provided the most value was in sourcing and processing portfolio data, and then reviewing the data to ensure accuracy.

WatersTechnology: What are the key differentiators of iLEVEL Managed Data Services compared to other similar services on the market? What does it allow buy-side firms to achieve that they wouldn't ordinarily be able to?

Guy: There are two key differentiators that come to mind. The first is our comprehensive, end-to-end approach to sourcing and processing portfolio data. Oftentimes, alternative solutions might address one function of the end-to-end data processing workflow. For example, a solution might offer a document management platform, however users are still required to extract the data from the source document manually. Similarly, data-extraction engines can be narrow and deep in one part of the data processing workflow, only solving for one step in the process.

By contrast, iLEVEL Managed Data Services solves for all functions within that end-to-end data processing workflow―the collection, the extraction, and the review of data. We deploy a best-in-breed approach to data processing, leveraging a combination of proprietary solutions, third-party tools, or a hybrid of both. This approach allows us to optimise that end-to-end workflow and enable our clients to operate at scale. For example, within our fund investment service where a client might have hundreds or thousands of fund investments and tens of thousands of underlying source documents to review, we take the operational burden off their plate by processing data on their behalf at scale.

WatersTechnology: And the other key differentiator?

Guy: As mentioned, iLEVEL Managed Data Services is comprised of three service types: direct equity, credit, and fund investments. In recent years, many buy-side managers have adopted a more sophisticated and diversified approach to their investments where it's not uncommon for them to launch direct equity, credit, and fund strategies in their portfolio. With iLEVEL Managed Data Services, multi-strategy clients can have all of that underlying asset, borrower, and fund data processed by one solution. By contrast, other service providers in the market have limited processing capabilities tailored to one investment strategy. For clients who are looking for a one-stop shop solution, S&P Global Market Intelligence offers premium data, software, and services catered to all investment strategies.

WatersTechnology: What key objectives do you have planned for release in the service during 2024? Can you describe those objectives and what that will mean practically for clients?

Guy: There are two big roadmap items that we're focused on going into 2024. The first is getting more data into the hands of our clients. A trend in the private markets space over the last 5-10 years is the rise of data reported by underlying assets and fund managers. This is something the industry has long sought to achieve―increased transparency and data sharing in the private markets. As more data is reported, we need to ensure that our service is capturing and delivering these expanded data sets to our clients at scale. A few key data sets we're focused on in 2024 are deeper asset level operating metrics for our fund investments, including ESG-related metrics, and fund financial data. These new data items will continue to enrich the data sets our clients already receive as part of our service, enabling deeper insights and analytics than ever before.

The second key focus area for 2024 is around data management as a service. As clients tap into more and more datasets - both proprietary and 3rd party - they must find ways to reconcile them to align with their one view of the investment world. While this is already part of our managed data service offering, in 2023 we launched data management as-a-service as a standalone offering. It's certainly something our team is excited to scale in 2024 so clients can continue to outsource their operational burdens and maximize value from our offerings.

S&P Global provides industry-leading data, software and technology platforms and managed services to tackle some of the most difficult challenges in financial markets. We help our customers better understand complicated markets, reduce risk, operate more efficiently and comply with financial regulation.

This article was published by S&P Global Market Intelligence and not by S&P Global Ratings, which is a separately managed division of S&P Global.