Savvy Investor, a research network for institutional investors, now has 20,000 members worldwide.
The 20,000th member, and recipient of a celebratory bottle of champagne, was Garry Cohen of British Airways Pensions.
Since launch in March 2015, Savvy Investor has grown rapidly, with the US, UK, Europe, and Canada accounting for over four-fifths of total site membership. This growth has been underpinned, primarily, by a “treasure chest” of high quality white papers – over 15,000 in total.
Chief Executive, Andrew Perrins (pictured), a qualified actuary and former asset allocator, says: “The research we’re curating and making available to our audience – asset managers, pension funds, asset allocators, CIOs and investment consultants – is helping them make better informed investment decisions. Our community is highly engaged, and every month more than 12,000 white papers are downloaded by users. Our members love the personalisation of the site, and the ease with which they can identify the best research papers on any given topic. We’re gaining 150-200 new members every week, many of those by word of mouth.”
Personalisation is fundamental to the Savvy Investor experience. Members can follow specific topics on registration – a maximum of 50 – within the six site parent topics: Pension Funds, Other Institutions (e.g. Sovereign Wealth Funds, Family Offices), the Investment Process, Quant and Tools, Markets Outlook, and Alternative Asset Classes. Lately, the company has noticed a trend towards an increasing engagement with papers around the topics of Smart Beta, ESG Integration and Index-based Products.
Since launch, more than 100 white papers have each received over 1,000 views. The top-five papers and top 5 blog posts of all time demonstrate the type of content that resonates well with members.
Between 20-30 white papers are added to the site daily. This places the Savvy Investor research team in a unique position to judge the best white papers being produced. Since 2015, the company has run the Savvy Investor Awards to celebrate the “best in class” investment and pensions white papers from the previous 12 months. The winning paper from 2016 has to date received almost 6,000 views.
The Savvy Investor company directory now contains over 2,800 companies and organisations, and the company’s investment conferences directory enables investors to identify the best conferences around the world.
Through strategic Elite and Premium partnerships, Savvy Investor has recently started working with leading companies and organisations within the asset management industry. Current “Elite” partners include CFA Institute, FTSE Russell, Cohen & Steers, Invesco, Robeco, and State Street Global Advisors.
