Over the last couple of months, global investors anxiously watched the latest news around Evergrande, a giant real estate development firm in China at risk of default. Investment teams around the world had the same question: What’s our exposure to Evergrande?
It’s an all-too-common scenario. From the global pandemic to carmaker scandals, natural disasters, utility bankruptcies, and more, investors are faced with market volatility and crises that can have a serious and swift impact on portfolios. Yet, institutional investors are still using outdated technology that adds to their risk, rather than help them monitor it. It’s not enough to wait until month-end to find this data when you need answers now.
For some teams, the exposure question is one that takes considerable time and work to answer. They have to contact multiple external managers, wait for data to come in from each manager, work out of different systems, combine this disparate data into a report and run it before they get their answer and can figure out their next move.
With Clearwater, up-to-date risk monitoring is available every day, and you can get answers with just a few clicks. If the CIO contacts you with an urgent request to find your company’s exposure to the latest headline-maker, you don’t have to make her wait. Instead, Clearwater’s web-based risk monitoring solution provides access to exposures by issuer, currency, country, duration, credit rating, and more. Users can also view benchmark comparisons and analyze other risk factors, such as cash flow forecasting, credit events, value at risk (VaR), and historical trends and exposures. It’s simple to run a report, view a dashboard, and get answers fast – wherever you are.
For example, if she asks you for your exposure to a company that’s been downgraded and you’re working with 10 asset managers, you can use Clearwater to run a complete holdings report, add in the issuer fields on that particular company and identify each position in each portfolio by asset manager. Within minutes, you’ll have a complete, accurate picture. If a natural disaster strikes, you can run a report to find your exposure to the industries affected in that region.
It’s not just the tools that make the difference in timely risk monitoring but the data set. Clearwater provides a consolidated view of your investment portfolio across managers and custody. Powerful automated aggregation and reconciliation creates a robust, validated investment data set that serves as the foundation for reporting and analysis.
Timely portfolio insights powered by trusted data is essential in today’s market when there’s so much at stake. On the Evergrande crisis, the Wall Street Journal reported on the serious implications of this situation, writing, “in theory, a collapse could chase investors away from other publicly traded developers, setting off a chain of defaults.”
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