Unique platform enables seamless access to world’s widest range of Asian financial markets analysis, all for a single subscription

Smartkarma, the premier collaborative marketplace for Asian investment research and analysis, has officially launched from closed beta. Smartkarma is radically changing the way global institutional investors create, distribute and consume investment insights. Through a single subscription, clients gain unlimited access to a large, fast growing pool of Insight Providers, which together make up the widest range of analysis on the Asian markets available.

Having started operations in a closed beta in January 2015, Smartkarma now has over 70 contributing firms, 400 individual insight providers and over 100 institutions using the platform. It combines intelligence from the world’s premier analysts, academics, data scientists and strategists, all in one unique ecosystem. At its core lies a predictive search engine that curates every piece of research and matches it in real-time with investor mandates. This helps clients manage portfolio risk and stay abreast of evolving, complex financial issues without having to subscribe to every voice on the street. It also provides tools to facilitate real-time public or private discussions between clients and Insight Providers that build additional value around insights via collaboration and conversation.

Scott Burns, Global Head of Asset Management Solutions, Morningstar comments, “The way professional investors access and consume research is undergoing dramatic change. Platforms like Smartkarma are leading the way and facilitating this change by creating new, technology driven avenues for research consumers and producers to connect. Being on the Smartkarma platform will give our existing clients a new way to search and find our research while also helping us gain exposure to new clients utilizing the platform.”

Smartkarma enables investors to take advantage of an unrivalled focus on content, a diverse range of global authors, and powerful search and sort features on a cloud based platform that enables access from anywhere, anytime. By creating a community of research analysis and end users, Smartkarma customers are better able to impact alpha generation, meet new regulatory requirements around unbundling and drive higher investment returns.

“The Smartkarma community is on a mission to challenge conventional thinking and change how we view, value and drive idea generation to foster a new standard of industry dialogue and cooperation,” says Raghav Kapoor, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Smartkarma. “Smartkarma has proposed a whole new business model to change industry economics. Through Smartkarma, clients pay a single subscription to get unlimited, yet personalized access to a large, fast growing pool of high quality diverse insight providers that are predominantly based in-country and collaborating real time. Insight Providers receive transparent, monthly payments based on their quantified value-add. In this manner, Smartkarma breaks down traditional silos, and brings efficiency to a global industry that has long suffered from opaque pricing and bloated cost structures.”

In just over a year since inception, Smartkarma has already published over 2,300 individual insights, representing an average of over 16% month-on-month growth in published research. A testament to the success of Smartkarma’s unique subscription model, this body of work has been viewed over 375,000 times. Platform activity is up threefold in the last 12 months, and growing 50% quarter-on-quarter.