How do clients use your Research Spend Analytics services?

Clients use Substantive to understand how their budgeting and payments to research providers compare vs peers for like for like services. Key benefits include identifying opportunities to cut costs, increase access/service, allocate budget efficiently (and demonstrate this to internal stakeholders) and gain transparency on spend vs the peer group/market


Who are your clients?

Substantive’s 100+ clients include asset managers, wealth managers, private banks and hedge funds based 60:40 Europe/North America.


Who is this service for?

  • Research Procurement Professionals – gain visibility on research spend vs peers for like for like services in order to budget and negotiate with greater efficiency and success.
  • Finance – external confirmation of budget/spend vs market competitors.
  • Investment Function – increase access/service levels and understand where you sit in the hierarchy of clients for each provider.
  • Compliance – ensure you can demonstrate you are using appropriate levels of research payments for each provider and show that you have engaged external analysis to do so.


How do you determine peer groups for investment research price benchmarking?

Your peer group for the analysis accounts for firms of a similar strategy, assets under management, equity/FICC breakdown and regional asset allocation. 


How can you benchmark research when my use case with each provider is unique?

At Substantive Research we collate data from the client which allows us to understand and match to specific use cases per provider. This includes information on pricing, product consumption, volume of interactions and user numbers which ensures we capture the particular footprint of the client with each of their providers.


What is “analyst mapping”?

Substantive Research is the only firm with accurate data on research providers’ analyst resourcing, which helps our clients align with providers that are investing within the areas and sectors where they need coverage and insight. It provides a breakdown of the number of existing analysts, the changes in headcount and experience levels in years across sectors (going back to 2017).