Mercury to herald Frontier research

Frontier Investment Consulting, which advises on $117 billion in assets, will sell its proprietary research of investment managers through an online database called Mercury.

Melbourne-based Frontier will offer Mercury to clients and non-clients seeking information and ratings on 1600 managed funds run by 1467 investment managers. The subscription database, available from October, will also contain notes from 4100 meetings Frontier has held with managers.

“It can be a standalone service to non-clients,” says Allison Hill, senior consultant at Melbourne-based Frontier. “Funds that don’t have a generalist consultant can use it to access broad information about managers.”

Quantitative analysis about manager performance will soon be added to the database, Hill says. Users of Mercury, which is named after the mythological Roman messenger god, can create customised data feeds through a “My Portfolio” function that aggregates information.

“It responds to what we see as quite significant changes within our client base, which is using more internal resources,” says Kristian Fok, deputy director of consulting at Frontier. “So how we deliver information to them is very important.”

The database was announced on Friday June 15 at Frontier’s client conference in Melbourne to an audience of superannuation fund executives. The consultancy also unveiled Prism, a project drawing on quantitative data to determine the characteristics of top-performing superannuation funds.

It announced that its name will change to Frontier Advisors in mid-July, when the business relocates to new offices in TAC House at 222 Exhibition Street in the Melbourne central business district.