Leveraging API technology

In this article, I want to share a glimpse of our new ‘benchmark builder’, due to be released in the second quarter of the year. This will initially feature on the admin portal of Mosaic and will be extended to other users thereafter. Over time, we have adopted a phased roll-out approach for certain features and it is working well.

The new feature allows us to build benchmarks (single or composite) directly within Mosaic, and then As aforementioned, this functionality will be shared with Client Portal users in due course, along with users of the Data Portal. These users, typically from the investment management community, manage the portfolios that Enhance advise on, or monitor, for clients. Although the API provides exciting and highly-efficient functionality at the point of creating benchmarks, there are significant benefits going forwards, such as getting updated statistics programmatically.

We decided to build out this feature for several reasons: to meet the growing demand clients have for multiple types of benchmarks on the reports we produce; to have the ability to retain performance history - portfolio and benchmark(s) - following a change in the investment strategy; and also, to make sure that we continue to deal with data and data licensing responsibly. Enhance is, in many ways, a data business, thus a key area of focus for us.

To deliver the broadest optionality to clients, we have partnered with two leading global businesses for the provision of market index and fund peer group index data. We do, of course, continue to work with MPI for discretionary managed portfolio peer group data. We will provide more information on the market and fund peer group initiatives in the future. Suffice to say, clients have never had as much choice on indices as we are now able to offer.

Here are a few screenshots from Mosaic that showcase elements of the benchmark builder.

This part of the application showcases the ‘benchmarks’ section of a portfolio within Mosaic. Here, we are on the ‘Manager’s Benchmark’ sub-section. The line chart shows a portfolio’s performance since inception, primarily for reference as the focus is on the Manager’s Benchmark in this instance. You will note that the Manager’s Benchmark changed at a certain point in time which Mosaic captures whilst retaining the full history. There is work to be done on the presentation of the information, however you can see a glimpse of the functionality. Additional sub-time-periods can be added as required, and the same is true for all of the other benchmark options associated with a portfolio. Finally, all portfolios within Mosaic get allocated a Primary / Secondary / Tertiary benchmark measure. Whilst this is geared towards providing clients with optionality, it also serves a purpose on consistency when applied appropriately across a book of clients.

The screenshot above indicates how a user adds an index / benchmark to a portfolio for a given time period. The flexible search function is augmented by category sub-sets to narrow down the results. The universe of available indices is well over 10,000 options…

We look forward to rolling out this new functionality to our clients in the coming months.