A Boutique Investment Bank Streamlines Data and Intelligence Gathering

Since the financial crisis of 2008, bank solvency and asset quality have been a key interest of investors, lenders, and regulators. Although the banking industry has so far proven to be resilient throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and despite the dramatic geopolitical changes in 2022, this is an important and evolving regulatory area. Banks may need to buy or sell loan books according to their changing risk profiles. Although much less frequent now – in fact, the industry has been buying back shares – banks still need to recapitalize. Banks require professional advice to efficiently execute these transactions, which in turn requires timely, reliable data and intelligence.

A European boutique investment bank focused on financial institution balance sheet optimizations, trade and supply chain solutions, and illiquid asset transactions approached S&P Global Market Intelligence intending to find a supplier who could provide market data, transaction data, high-quality bank and insurance data, and sell-side broker research. Ideally, they wanted this on an integrated platform which could be their primary data source.

Pain Points

The banking and insurance sectors are complex from both an accounting and business model perspective. Advising customers in these sectors requires specialist information, which can be time-consuming to manually collate. So too are the infrastructure sector and transactions involving illiquid assets. Advisors also require up-to-date intelligence on transactions and trends within the respective industries to build the confidence of potential and existing customers.

This investment bank wanted to find a single information provider that could streamline their data and intelligence gathering, providing:

• An efficient way to monitor market activity, e.g., share prices and news.
• Access to reliable banking and insurance-specific data.
• Ability to track news and access industry research to keep on top of market developments and competitor activity.
• Transaction data involving loan portfolios, recapitalizations, and other illiquid assets.
• Illiquid asset pricing data, e.g., fixed income pricing data, loan data, and credit default swap (CDS) data.
• Ability to efficiently screen for industry and company data for use within their own models and processes.
  
  

The Solution

With the help of Market Intelligence's Industry Product Specialists, who each focus on specific sectors such as FIG, we were able to diagnose and understand their requirements. This started with the S&P Capital IQ Pro desktop that combines an unrivaled breadth and depth of data, news, and research with tech-forward productivity tools. This was complemented with its Aftermarket Research collection, which provides reports from brokers and independent research providers.

In addition, the company wanted to know more about the February 2022 merger of S&P Global and IHS Markit and its impact on our product roadmap. Pricing data on less liquid assets were of particular interest: loans, fixed income, and structured products. This discussion was a defining feature of the deal.

The S&P Capital IQ Pro platform has detailed bank and insurance-specific data. Its comprehensive European banks and financial institutions coverage includes 220,000+ mappable branch locations, financial profiles, country banking statistics, and more.

• Quickly compare loan and deposit composition by type or risk-weighted regulatory capital and asset data.
• Probe credit quality metrics or dive into embedded-value financials.
• Use the mapping tool to easily create professional-quality maps to see a company's branch network or the geographical impact of a merger.
• The platform offers company merger and capital-raising histories providing historical M&A data and equity offerings, including detailed deal multiples. The comprehensive capital structure data helps you drill down to specific company debt or equity issues. Assess synergies and perform deal scenario mapping.
• The platform's transactions dataset also includes illiquid asset transactions, including Non-Performing Loan and Closed Life books, in addition to physical assets such as real estate.
  
  

The Aftermarket Research collection features 35+ million reports from 1,800+ global investment research providers and regional brokers, including Citi, Credit Suisse, Barclays, J.P. Morgan, and Macquarie, that provides essential perspectives on companies, sectors, and industries.

Economics & Country Risk is exclusive proprietary intelligence produced by S&P Global analysts that provides current and trending risk levels facing a given county. These risk levels are provided on both a composite overall and sub-component basis, spanning Political, Economic, Legal, Tax, Operational, and Security.

Key Benefits

The S&P Capital IQ Pro platform provides the advisory team with the toolset they need to research and advise their customers on complex transactions. They are now benefitting from:

• Detailed banking and insurance-specific financial data.
• Data reliability given Market Intelligence's three-tiered data approval process, which includes 15,000 automated error checks and manual inspection. Supported by a Data Quality Program, customers often discover S&P Capital IQ Pro data can be more reliable than manually collecting it.
• Source tagging allows customers to click into the data to see the calculations and source document. This is particularly useful in a sector like banking where the accounting is often complex and a variety of sources are used to populate the data.
• Access to thousands of analyst reports from well-known brokerage houses and market research providers to obtain in-depth company and industry analyses.
• Enhanced productivity with access to a single integrated data source, analytics, and research.
• Original Financial Institutions Group (FIG) news content and research. The Market Intelligence in-house Financials news team explores complex issues – for example, bank regulation – in addition to engaging with company leadership at company events. Third-party cross-sector news from Dow Jones complements this to provide a complete picture.
• Competitive and market-moving insights with watch lists and alerts focused on companies and industries of interest.
• Robust tools for routine tasks with the Excel Plug-in, screening capabilities, refreshable models, and more.
• Dedicated teams provide training and ongoing support to help users understand the range of available capabilities.
  
  

Click here to explore the data solutions mentioned in this case study.