Wiesenberger's newest fund analyst works fast and cheap. Wiesenberger and San Francisco-based UpTick Data Technologies have come together to create software that takes Wiesenberger's fund data and turns it into readable prose.

The upshot is that Wiesenberger can generate commentary every month for every fund it tracks. How is the firm going to leverage this new potential?

"What we're using it for now is to generate mutual fund analytical reports for firms to use on their Web sites," said Joe Stensland, vice president of business development at Wiesenberger. "There are also applications to just about any kind of financial product."

Wiesenberger plans to sell the commentary as part of a service to broker/dealers and independent financial planners that want to use it in their practices. Mutual funds can use the data either for their own sites or to disseminate in material or sales tools used by intermediaries.

However, the reports have broad applications and Wiesenberger may add them as a premium research option to its existing products. The reports compare funds to the benchmark, peer group, and against historical averages.

"These reports will provide qualitative nature to quantitative facts," explained Stensland. "It can serve as a summary of the fund. We're just putting in a qualitative narrative, if you will."

Wiesenberger and UpTick are working on other collaborations, but the firms declined to comment on any future projects.

 

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