United States-based exchange-traded funds (ETF) analysis firm AltaVista Research has launched its services in Australia and aims to secure research contracts with local banks.
The firm partnered with Independent Investment Research (IIR) to form ETF Research Centre Australia, a new website specifically aimed at local financial planners.
The service provides advisers with fundamental analysis on Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) listed ETFs in addition to descriptions and performance data, AltaVista founder and president Michael Krause told InvestorDaily.
"The basic idea is to analyse the fundamentals of all of the underlying securities in an ETF - you are basically just marrying that list of constituents with the fundamental data for them, both historical and forecast," he said.
"So you aggregate that back up to the ETF level so that you can view and value it like a whole, much like a single stock based on fundamentals."
AltaVista was in talks with local banks to sell them the research, Krause said.
"So we will hopefully provide them with multiple logins so that their whole adviser teams can go in the website and search and maybe people on their research team will want to look at the portfolio analyser [tool] to create their in-house approved portfolios," he said.
"We have made a couple of sales of this among some ... mid-level advisory firms."
Advisers would need more detailed research on ETFs as their "number will explode" in Australia as it already has in the US, which has over 500 equity ETFs compared to 32 locally, he said.
"Obviously, you're seeing somewhat of a shift in the structure of the advisory industry here with the ban on commissions, and so that as you know will push more advisers to be happy to offer ETFs or to have their clients invest in ETFs," Krause said.
