Alternative Asset Management

Effective management of alternative assets involves assessing various interconnected risks, such as valuation uncertainty, liquidity constraints, counterparty exposure, leverage, and market volatility, while optimizing portfolio performance and capital preservation.

S&P Global Market Intelligence aids alternative asset management through its Risk & Valuations Services, which offers integrated credit, valuation, liquidity, and counterparty intelligence. This solution provides independent valuations and portfolio risk analytics, improving underwriting, portfolio monitoring, governance around valuations, and decision-making for private and alternative assets.

By enhancing visibility into risks and liquidity conditions, alternative asset managers can shift from reactive monitoring to proactive risk management, fostering stronger governance and greater confidence in navigating complex private markets.

Strengthen private and alternative underwriting with forward-looking credit, macro, and valuation intelligence.

• Broaden the opportunity set in private and illiquid markets when transparency is limited by enabling consistent screening across public and unrated private issuers using modeled credit and macro insight.
• Strengthen underwriting discipline where comparables are scarce by applying integrated credit and macro insight across private and structured assets to assess issuer strength and downside risk.
• Improve fair value defensibility across mixed liquidity portfolios by enabling consistent comparison of valuation, liquidity, and credit risk across liquid and illiquid holdings.
• Identify portfolio stress earlier when performance shifts don’t show up in reported financials by surfacing early operational and market signals to inform underwriting decisions.
• Support investment conviction under governance scrutiny with independent benchmarks and forward‑looking risk signals that strengthen valuation governance and investor transparency, driving clearer IC decisions. 

• Capture differentiated alpha in flexible/leveraged mandates using scalable time‑series datasets integrated into systematic models across long/short, relative value, and multi‑asset strategies.
• Reduce model risk in volatile regimes with robust back‑testing across time, regimes, and asset classes, increasing confidence in live strategy performance.
• Generate alternative alpha beyond traditional disclosures by surfacing indicators tied to physical trade flows, supply chains, and economic activity, revealing earlier inflection points.
• Improve timing and risk management by monitoring crowding and leverage‑driven positioning through transparent sentiment and positioning signals.
• Deploy signals faster from research to production with standardized, production‑ready datasets that integrate cleanly into research, portfolio construction, and monitoring workflows. 

• See downside concentration risk earlier when market dislocations hit leveraged portfolios by using integrated market risk analytics across liquid and illiquid exposures.
• Intervene sooner in private credit deterioration when market signals are absent by applying forward‑looking credit metrics and independent benchmarks across rated and unrated holdings—supporting capital preservation.
• Manage liquidity and exit timing risk in less‑liquid holdings using liquidity indicators and pricing transparency to assess tradability and constraints—supporting capital calls, distributions, and exits.
• Prepare for tail events and impairment risk by running scenario‑based stress tests using macro and credit assumptions to quantify potential losses.
• Clarify return drivers across illiquid and levered exposures with risk decomposition that supports portfolio adjustments and better alignment between risk, return, and capital preservation objectives. 

• Strengthen valuation governance and LP confidence when fair value requires robust documentation by using independent, market‑consistent valuations that support reporting and audit defensibility.
• Reduce operational risk and margin disputes by improving calculation and monitoring of margin/collateral obligations across derivatives and leverage structures.
• Lower breaks and governance risk from messy data by maintaining standardized, validated reference data as a single source of truth across entities, instruments, and ownership.
• Support benchmark tracking in listed/interval structures with precise, timely index/ETF updates and intraday valuations, improving benchmark tracking and compliance.
• Improve capital efficiency and liquidity planning by using transparent pricing and financing inputs to support capital allocation, funding, and collateral decisions across fund structures. 

• Accelerate investor onboarding with lower compliance risk when beneficial ownership checks are complex by automating screening against sanctions, PEPs, and adverse media using trusted regulatory data.
• Reduce regulatory breaches and reputational risk by continuously screening portfolios (including underlying holdings) to detect direct and indirect sanctioned exposure across private holdings, co‑investments, and structured vehicles.
• Clarify obligations across regimes and jurisdictions using regulatory classification data to determine which rules and reporting requirements apply, with less manual interpretation.
• Lower reporting risk and findings by supporting accurate, timely reporting across private fund regimes and investor transparency requirements.
• Enforce side letters and LP restrictions at scale with automated checks against mandates, restrictions, and exclusion lists, strengthening governance without slowing investment decisions. 

• Reduce market impact and forced deleveraging risk by assessing pre‑trade liquidity conditions with transparent pricing and liquidity indicators across liquid and less‑liquid exposures.
• Improve entry/exit and leverage decisions by detecting crowding, short positioning, and leverage‑driven exposure through positioning and borrowing activity signals.
• Lower funding costs and improve leverage efficiency with transparency into securities lending, repo markets, and collateral availability to inform financing, margin, and collateral decisions.
• Deliver more predictable execution and funding outcomes by balancing timing, liquidity, financing capacity, and risk using integrated pre‑trade liquidity and market transparency. 

• Mitigate counterparty‑driven liquidity and leverage risk earlier when deterioration impacts leveraged portfolios by using forward‑looking credit and market‑implied risk insight to assess counterparty strength and emerging stress.
• Improve operational resilience, valuation governance, and investor confidence by centralizing and standardizing due diligence across prime brokers, administrators, valuation agents, and financing partners.
• Respond faster to emerging stress events by enabling continuous monitoring of counterparties and third parties using dynamic risk signals and alerts, especially for margin‑intensive strategies.