The new data will debut in the third quarter's release of
Six months ago, the Rockville, Md. firm began collecting its own offshore data, which appears in the current release of the program. Nonetheless, Wiesenberger found that its customers preferred that it buy data from an established provider rather than build its own product.
'It's basically in response to requests we're getting from our clients to increase our international product coverage,' said Mike Iapalucci, executive vice president of international business development at Wiesenberger. 'We have a team of analysts who are collecting data directly from fund companies, but we found that we really needed to have a more comprehensive database, so as a result, we partnered with the
While the raw data will come from FT Interactive, Wiesenberger adds value through its analytics. Said Iapalucci, 'We take their data and do a lot to it and make it available in our tool: we're adding substantial value in that way.'
Wisenberger is a division of Thomson Financial, publisher of this website.
FT Interactive will provide offshore fund and UK unit trust data for
However, for now, Wiesenberger will focus on adding the information to a single platform as well as providing other functional updates to complement the new data.
Included among these enhancements will be both multi-currency and muli-lingual capacity. Iapalucci said the firm is contemplating adding up to five currencies: US dollar, euro, pound sterling, Swiss franc, and Japanese yen.
'We will look at implementing those currencies; it may not be all at once,' said Iapalucci. 'The dollar and euro cover 80 percent of the offshore universe.'
Iapalucci explained that, while multi-language capacity will definitely be added to the next version, the firm is still undecided about which languages are in greatest demand. He added, however, that firms have already expressed interest in Spanish, Italian, German, French, and Mandarin Chinese.
