HSBC Invests in Research Technology Firm Visible Alpha

Visible Alpha, an investment research technology firm, on Thursday announced that HSBC has become the latest bank to join the ranks of the company's official investors.

HSBC also intends to add its research analyst models to Visible Alpha's Insights platform and will be contributing to Visible Alpha Consensus Data, the announcement read.

Visible Alpha was created through the collaborative efforts of its founding investors, a group of prestigious banks and financial services holding companies that includes Bank of America, Citi, Jefferies, Morgan Stanley, and UBS.

In addition to the founding investors, other investment banks and financial services companies have already invested in Visible Alpha, contributing to $38 million raised in a January funding round alone. The list of investors includes Goldman Sachs, Banco Santander, Exane BNP Paribas, Macquarie Group, Royal Bank of Canada, and Wells Fargo.

Visible Alpha aims to conduct innovative investment research, that will yield new solutions for its clients in meeting the requirement of MiFID II, with regards to budgeting and research valuation.

The company intends to apply its raised funds to continue to add to its already fast pace of growth, as well as to enhance its output of transparent and efficient investment research solutions.

As previously reported by Finance Magnates, Thomson Reuters also partnered with Visible Alpha toward the end of last year, with the goal of conducting research on MiFID II Compliance.

Visible Alpha has created a platform, which already onboarded over 450 research providers as active participants. Moreover, the platform currently has more than 100 Buy-Side companies, which have a combined $16 trillion in assets under management (AUM).

Visible Alpha Advisory Board

The company also announced the establishment of its new advisory board, which will enable the company to gain insights and guidance from the financial companies that have already poured in their investments.

The facilitation of such guidance and communication will help to validate that product development is headed in the proper direction and will cater to the needs of its clients.

Chief Executive Officer of Visible Alpha, Scott Rosen commented: “we are pleased that HSBC embraces our vision for the future of institutional research and appreciates the ability of our platform to enhance the gathering of insights from their analysts’ underlying company forecasts and assumptions. We are committed to improving the value of communication between all market participants and helping investors find unique insights into the future performance of companies.”

Meanwhile, David May, Global Head of Research at HSBC and Advisory Board member said: “visible Alpha has rapidly become a leader in helping both the buy side and the sell side overcome the myriad of challenges involved in creating and disseminating investment research. We look forward to working with them to provide a valuable service to our clients.”

HSBC has also pursued other avenues of research, as earlier this month the bank announced it is launching a pilot program on Blockchain -based payment services.