Smart beta era for fixed-income?

World’s biggest asset manager BlackRock has listed their fixed income range smart beta last month, iShares Edge High Yield Defensive Bond ETF. While the equity smart beta strategies and ETFs are hugely popular, fixed income smart beta products (ETFs in particular) are still in a nascent stage. With BlackRock entering this arena, will this be a smart beta era for fixed income? are other biggies of asset management to follow suit?

We at Invisage (previously VTFinTech) believe that smart beta fixed income strategies are going to catchup with their equity counterparts and we are gearing up our offering for fixed income range! Our product Parity One will soon have fixed income support to design smart beta strategies int he form of benchmarks and portfolios.

Reference https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-11/blackrock-doesn-t-mind-being-early-to-this-smart-beta-party

The (use) case for Alt Data: how are investment firms integrating new forms of insights into the investment process.

A datapoint that has been doing the rounds recently is that “$1.3bn was spent by investment management firms on alt data in 2020 and the market is expected to grow by 30% annually for next 5 years.”

Why ESG Data is Alt Data

2020 was the year ESG went mainstream. The confluence of a build-up in asset owner pressure, regulatory changes and the pandemic caused a rise in both operational and investment spending on ESG by investment managers.