Blackrock

Exploring the universe of the beta investment strategy

How can we help institutional investors discover and evaluate all of their options?

The challenge

How can we present ETFs as an alternative to futures?

Beta strategy investors pick an index and an investment instrument that tracks its returns as closely as possible. What if they could explore the complete universe of instruments to find the best performance with the lowest cost with the lowest amount of risk?

The comparison tool: a filter panel beside a results table of 1,102 products, each with product type, benchmark, fee, assets and correlation to target

The process

Journey mapping, user interviews, and rapid iteration

I sat down with beta strategy institutional investors and mapped out their whole process, identified pain points and opportunities. I presented concepts, refined them until we landed on a solution. From there I worked in agile sprints to design, validate, and iterate in fast two week cycles.

A journey map built from pink sticky notes on butcher paper, tracing success criteria and pain points

A working session around a conference table with the concept projected on screen

Two participants talking through the design in front of the sticky-note wall

Getting started

Easy to drill down, quick to compare

Users can narrow their field of view by selecting a target index or filtering by exposure. Afterwards they can add their top instruments to compare.

Filtering by asset class, region, market, capitalisation and ETF domicile, with matching products listed alongside

Getting granular

Using the right lenses

ETFs and Futures are hard to compare for a reason. Many of their metrics aren’t one for one. It’s important to use the right lenses to evaluate them. The result is a high level view that also works at ground level.

Exposure: a diverging bar chart of the largest exposure difference between products by sector — Exposure

Liquidity: a scatter plot of average daily volume against assets under management — Liquidity

Cost: a bar chart comparing total cost of ownership in basis points — Cost

Performance: a line chart of cumulative tracking difference to the target benchmark — Performance

The results

Two weeks of work in 15 minutes

By consolidating the complete universe of investment vehicles into one tool I was able to provide a comprehensive comparison experience that simplifies the search and evaluation process.