Charles River IMS vs. FactSet Workstation

If your are large asset management company focused mostly on interest rate products and you are large institutional trader your way is the use of Charles River Portfolio Management & Risk Analytics account which is most reputable custodian institution which offers superior tool for bonds trading - Charles River IMS. Charles River Portfolio Management & Risk Analytics is focused on large bond traders, so is not offered for small hedge funds. It is not appropriate if you are small account holder and focused more on stock market offerings, margin trading and less focused on custodian reputation. There is no separate risk module for trading group risk management.

Incentivized

FactSet Workstation is great for equity research. It is very simple to use and has the most crucial items an analyst needs. Wish it can bridge some of the gaps a Bloomberg Terminal can provide such as the search function and most importantly the chat function. You can easily find an investor on Bloomberg and get the contact info to do more research, it's basically non-existent on FactSet Workstation. Also, I use the FactSet Workstation news function and a lot of times, the news are a repeat of the same thing through the day. I feel like reading the same thing. Better to send one less update if the customer/user already read it.

Incentivized

• Focused on bonds
• Risk approache based on counterparties risk measurement
• Buid in scenario strategies and testing
• CDS are available for trading (exlusive offering)
• Portfolio construction
• Yield analytics
• Exotics: SWAPs, SWAPtions
• Sophisticated options analytics
• Currency forwards (exclusive offering)

Incentivized

• Easy/clear UI for navigation
• Easily find and sort through financial filings to get to the data
• Document search functionality seems to be improving consistently with more robust features

Incentivized

• Equities - microstructure to consider detection of iceberg orders
• Build in algos for large trades execution
• Corporate or Banking level platform - not focused on mid sized business
• SAP connectivity
• Only Charles River Portfolio Management & Risk Analytics accounts
• No trading group accounts capabilities
• Needs arbitrage trading algo: spread, statistical, merger for stocks

Incentivized

• Excel add-in formulas are not constructed in an intuitive way and too often require assistance from help desk
• No chat function for help desk, which means delayed assistance time or talking with non-native English speakers, some of whom can be difficult to understand
• There should be an AI chatbot that can answer routine queries; for more advanced questions, a human rep can be connected
• Portfolio performance metrics should be downloadable using Excel add-in rather than being available only on Workstation

Incentivized

We need the FactSet data and capabilities to complete 75% of the financial analyses that we complete for both internal and external purposes. It is invaluable and I am not aware of any other provider that would be able to fill this gap that FactSet does

Incentivized

It does everything I need. It is pretty user friendly and easy to work with whatever technology interface I am using (desk top, notebook, tablet, or mobile phone). I am able to get work done whether I am in the office, at home, or traveling. The user up time is very good. They are rarely doing maintenance when I need to use the platform

Incentivized

I think the data delivery could be improved, but it's a good data set.

Incentivized

Charles River Portfolio Management & Risk Analytics is a state of the art company which owns state of the art products Charles River Portfolio Management & Risk Analytics. If you are considering long term value, capital preservation strategy and pension funds management that is the right choice if holdien one account versus several to get systematic diversification. You can run even department of banks treasury with use of Charles River Portfolio Management & Risk Analytics. So good but focused on large investors needs and diversification focus.

Incentivized

Product is magnitudes more affordable and provides 80% of the functionality that Bloomberg has and is working to build out the remaining. The workstation is more user friendly than bloomberg but still not perfect. Not as robust as a Bloomberg Terminal and doesn't have the chat/trading features.

Incentivized

• Neutral. We are in system migration process.
• We expect to get our P&L less volatile (+/- 5%). More international bonds in a mix
• Top custodian is our first priority

Incentivized

• FactSet Workstation is essential to my work - let's just say I use it daily and feel more comfortable having it on in the background
• Consensus info and transcripts are the go to feature
• Newsflow is a third I use FactSet Workstation for - but would like it more if they provide more details like Visible Alpha

Incentivized