Evaluating Institutional Investor Databases
Are you an investment professional looking for the most accurate and in-depth data on institutional investors and asset managers?
FIN Searches’ platform offers a powerful suite of features and tools that allow you to conduct highly specific searches through hundreds of filters, customize your experience, and receive alerts on new mandates and documents based on your interests.
With over 15 years of experience in providing crucial data intelligence to the investment community, we have a proven track record of helping asset managers find new business and cultivate relationships with institutional investors.
What to Consider When Choosing the Right Institutional Data Platform
1. Allocators
The first thing to understand is what each database specializes in. Some databases will focus on a particular type of allocator such as family offices, pension plans, foundations and endowments or RIAs.
2. Regions
Knowing the location of allocators you are looking to target can also play a role in your decision. If you are targeting the U.S. market, understanding the coverage a database has in that region is vital.
3. Strategies
There has been an increase in databases focusing on specific strategies. Understanding how they approach their coverage is important. Strategy-focused databases will have a tunnel vision focus that can bring a unique approach to those asset classes, however, they can also result in missing out on new opportunities that were not on their radar screen.
Depth and Accuracy
Databases can claim to be everything to everyone. Understanding whether they are a mile wide or a mile deep is important to identify early on. Find out how many allocators are being tracked within specific silos. Understand the number of contacts the database is maintaining and updating annually. When reviewing databases, don’t allow cherry picking – the providers will always pick examples that would stand out to you. Ask for data or examples around information you care about.
Saying you cover a specific type of allocator or region is one thing. Keeping that information up-to-date and accurate is a whole other ballgame. Check out what information the database has on your firm, what clients they list you with and what details they have on clients you worth with or know intimately. Having timely information on asset allocation changes, new consultants advising allocators and personnel changes gives you powerful data your competitors may be missing.
Coverage
Searches & Hires
If you want to know about potential business leads and stay up-to-date on the activity of institutions, having a database that is actively reporting on investment manager RFPs, searches, hires and terminations will provide you with an ongoing opportunity set and the most accurate data. Knowing current asset allocations, the current investment consultants and what institutions are discussing each day brings a different level of context than a stale directory updated annually off filings.
Allocators & Contacts
You need to know what institutions are out there, you need to know who works there and you need to know how to get in touch with them. For the institutions, you want to have details on their current asset allocation and investment manager roster so you can go into a conversation armed with the information you need to show you have done your research. For contacts, you need to know not only the key contact but also the analysts and other investment staff that may be the appropriate contact for initial outreach or focused on your particular asset class. Having phone numbers, e-mails and LinkedIn profiles help you get in touch with these individuals.
How FIN Searches Addresses These Issues
Allocators
FIN Searches provides information on U.S. and Canadian institutional investors. Our database includes public defined benefit plans, corporate and union pensions, foundations and endowments, hospital plans, operating funds and deferred compensation plans. We also have detailed information on investment consultants and outsourced chief investment officers that work with these institutions.
Regions
Our focus is on U.S. and Canadian institutional investors.
Strategies
We cover all investment activity at institutions, including long-only equity and fixed-income, private equity, venture capital, real estate, credit, real assets including infrastructure and hedge funds. If an institutional investor is invested in it, we cover it.
Depth
By focusing on U.S. and Canadian institutions, we are able to broadly cover one of the most active regions in the world for investment activity. We cover over 13,500 institutions and more than 24,000 contacts at those institutions and over 350 investment consultants and outsourced cios with nearly 10,500 contacts.
Accuracy
Our database is updated by our excellent team of reporters and researchers. It is maintained by people, not algorithms and web scraping. Each day, our reporters are speaking with pension plans, foundations and endowments and other institutions to discuss investment activity, watching board meetings live and attending investment conferences to ensure we are providing our subscribers with the most timely and accurate information in the marketplace. Our researchers are scouring investment reports, investment manager and investment consultant presentations, websites and more to ensure our data is up-to-date and accurate.
Investment Mandate Activity
There is not one database that more comprehensively covers the investment activity of institutional investors like FIN Searches. Last year, we reported on over 4,500 mandates and wrote over 3,300 stories across our FIN Daily, Nonprofit News and Emerging Manager Monthly publications that are included in each subscription.
Firm Profiles & Contact Directory
Our active coverage of the space allows us to update our database in real time. When there are investment staff changes, investment consultant changes, new asset allocations approved and shifts among the investment manager roster, that data is updated immediately in FIN Searches. We also dive below just the key contacts to track the entire investment staff at institutions and investment consulting firms, including photos, bios, direct phone numbers, e-mails and LinkedIn profiles when possible.
Other Values
Filtering Capabilities
With so much data, being able to narrow your dataset allows you to more efficiently identify the information you are looking to isolate. With hundreds of search filters, users can conduct highly specific searches to find the information they need.
Customization
Utilizing our dashboard, we allow users to create a personalized experience, while our saved searches feature allows subscribers to receive alerts on new mandates and documents based on their specific interests.
Dedicated Investment Support
With FIN Searches, you get a research arm for your investment team that can help you make more informed investment decisions based on our data and reporting. Our team is dedicated to providing you with the most accurate and timely information on investment mandates, investor contacts, and institutional investor profiles.
Enhancements
Our premium add-ons, such as document search, advanced exporting and CRM integration, offer even more flexibility and value to our users by having all the information you need in one place.
We offer several packages to choose from, each tailored to the specific needs of our clients. With FIN Searches, you get a comprehensive and reliable source of information that is cost-effective, allowing you to make informed investment decisions that can help grow your portfolio.
Check Out FIN Searches Today
FIN Searches has built a proven reputation over the past 15+ years offering the most powerful and complete sales and marketing tool for the institutional asset management industry.
Our commitment to providing highly specific searches, valuable intelligence, customization options, as well as premium add-on offerings have made us an industry standard for institutional investment professionals.
If you are ready to start seeing immediate results you can schedule a demo using the calendar tool below. We'll also provide you with up to two weeks of trial access.