ERI Scientific Beta has announced the launch of a series of new multifactor smart beta indices. Noël Amenc, CEO of ERI Scientific Beta, said the Multi-Beta Diversified High Factor Exposure series uses a top-down approach to maximise explicit risk control and diversification while taking interactions between factors into account. The methodology uses a High-Factor-Exposure filter which eliminates stocks that have exposures to factors other than the desired factor. The indices may serve as the underlying for future investment products such as ETFs.

Scientific Beta, a smart beta index provider and a commercial venture of EDHEC Risk Institute, has announced the launch of the Scientific Beta Low Carbon Multi-Beta Multi-Strategy Indexes. Developed in collaboration with the South Pole Group, a sustainability consultant, the indices seek to reduce the carbon footprint of equity investments by as much as 80% while simultaneously being able to create more than 50% additional value in the medium term. Maximilian Horster, Director Financial Industry at South Pole Group, commented: “We are delighted to share our expertise with ERI Scientific Beta to produce low-carbon versions of their highly respected multi-smart factor indices. The combination of low-carbon emissions and state-of-the-art smart factor indices is a compelling opportunity for investors globally.”

Amundi ETF, a Paris-headquartered provider of exchange-traded funds, has unveiled plans to launch a second multi-strategy smart beta ETF, providing exposure to European large- and mid-cap equities. Linked to the Scientific Beta Extended Developed Europe Multi-Beta Multi-Strategy ERC Strategy Index, the new ETF draws upon multiple factor exposures and alternative weighting schemes in a bid to provide superior performance compared to conventional market cap-weighted offerings. Valerie Baudson, CEO at Amundi ETF, Indexing and Smart Beta, said: “This innovative multi smart beta ETF strengthens our smart beta equity range following the success of Amundi’s Global Equity Multi Smart Allocation Scientific Beta UCITS ETF, launched in 2014.”

ERI Scientific Beta, the smart beta indexing initiative spun out off EDHEC-Risk Institute, has announced the release of a new suite of multi-factor smart beta indices based around fundamental measures of quality, namely high profitability and low investment. The combination of these factors has culminated in the firm’s Quality Multi-Beta Indices, a rules-based investable index which could form the basis of an exchange-traded fund. According to Scientific Beta, the high profitability and low investment risk factors have been identified in academic literature as a source of higher returns in the long-term when compared to market cap-weighted benchmarks.

For many, the investment holy grail is a strategy that will outperform across all stages of the market cycle. Multi-factor smart beta strategies are one of the more recent attempts to achieve this. The solid recent performance of the Scientific Beta Multi-Beta Multi-Strategy Index, which underlies exchange-traded funds from Amundi and Morgan Stanley, appears to suggest that multi-factor strategies can indeed deliver in some of the most testing environments as well in more benign periods.

One of the toughest challenges facing smart beta investors today is in determining how these strategies will perform over changing market environments. A new research paper from Scientific Beta offers investors guidance on what to look for when assessing ETFs and indices based on these strategies. According to Scientific Beta, their publication “highlights the importance of a limited choice of factors with simple definitions to avoid the temptations of factor mining or factor fishing, which are among the main causes of the lack of relative out-of-sample robustness of smart beta strategies that are based on factor exposures. It also underlines the importance of allocating between smart factors that have decorrelated excess returns with respect to cap-weighted indices in order to favour the absolute robustness of the smart beta strategies implemented.”

Morgan Stanley has introduced its debut exchange-traded fund, the MS Scientific Beta Global Equity Factors UCITS ETF (GEF). The ETF, which was unveiled on the London Stock Exchange earlier this month, provides exposure to the Scientific Beta Developed Multi-Beta Multi-Strategy Equal Weight Index and is the first ETF to be launched between Morgan Stanley and smart beta index provider ERI Scientific Beta. Rolled out under the investment bank’s FundLogic platform, the fund aims to meet the growing demand from institutional investors to access smart beta indices and factor indices through liquid and transparent products.

Amundi, Europe’s fifth largest provider of exchange-traded funds, has announced the launch of the Amundi ETF Global Equity Multi Smart Allocation Scientific Beta UCITS ETF on Euronext Paris. The fund offers exposure to a sophisticated multi-factor smart beta strategy with the liquidity and simplicity of an ETF, and is aimed at long-term investors seeking a buy-and-hold global developed markets equities solution. It is linked to the SciBeta Developed Multi-Beta Multi-Strategy ERC Index, a strategy index developed by Scientific Beta, the commercial indexing arm of EDHEC-Risk Institute.

ERI Scientific Beta, the smart beta indexing initiative spun out off EDHEC-Risk Institute, has announced the launch of the SciBeta Multi-Beta Multi-Strategy Indices. The indices address two limitations of market capitalisation-weighted indices, namely ill-suited exposures to systematic risk factors and excessive concentration in a small number of stocks. Noël Amenc, CEO of ERI Scientific Beta, said: “Multi-beta multi-strategy indices allow equity investors to expand their opportunity set beyond the standard equity premium. These indices of indices are effective entry points for asset owners who wish to dispose of a robust and proven asset allocation solution.”