J.P. Morgan melds its buy-side data with FactSet analytics

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Jason Mirsky and Chris Ellis
The integration of Fusion with FactSet was prompted by J.P. Morgan's institutional clients, who wanted to receive J.P. Morgan data using modern technology, according to Jason Mirsky, J.P. Morgan Securities Services' head of data solutions, at left. Chris Ellis, FactSet's head of strategic initiatives (at right), said asset managers and asset owners are trying to reimagine their operating models using new technology and capabilities. "If you can maximize your performance, you're going to attract assets and make your clients happy," he said.

J.P. Morgan Securities Services has enhanced its Fusion data management platform with the addition of performance reporting and portfolio analytics software from FactSet. The integration is intended to provide asset managers and owners with advanced data management, outsourced accounting, and analytics capabilities, freeing them to concentrate on investment insights and improved portfolio performance.

Fusion is the backbone of J.P. Morgan's AI efforts for data and entitlements, which are led by its Chief Data and Analytics Office Teresa Heitsenrether. Acting as a fintech within J.P. Morgan, Fusion helped to roll out a large language model-based generative AI product, the LLM Suite 'analyst in a box' software, to 200,000 bank employees for tasks such as document summarization.

Companies are facing a sea of data made up of standardized data, normalized data and alternative data from private markets, making it difficult to distribute data-enabled insights to decision-makers in a timely manner, Cubillas Ding, Celent's research director, capital markets and investment management, said.

"Even with established and well-understood data sets, efforts to consolidate and aggregate the book of record, performance and risk analytics have demanded substantial integration efforts and incurred high costs," Ding said.

Fusion uploads and consolidates J.P. Morgan's accounting and investment book of records (ABOR/IBOR) and third-party providers' ABOR/IBOR and integrates them with FactSet for analytics, giving asset managers and owners a single view of their public and private investment data. Clients who outsource their performance operations under this integration use J.P. Morgan's global support and governance model.

"FactSet provides support for J.P. Morgan's client support and our two organizations have developed a joint operating model for the systems," said Jason Mirsky, J.P. Morgan Securities Services' head of data solutions.

Integrated platforms such as Fusion and FactSet enable buy-side data analytics, which for years had lagged behind sell-side analytics, to catch up by turning data into information and actionable analytics knowledge for investment decisions. For example, clients can analyze their investment performance to see what returns they are getting.

"This is where the combination of FactSet and Fusion plays a major role in making sense of the data from custodians, fund administrators and transactions and making this information usable," said Jay Wolstenholme, strategic advisor, capital markets at Datos Insights. "Through decades of work, FactSet and J.P. Morgan have created a viable product that adds FactSet analytics and ESG benchmarking data to performance and risk data."