The unbundled research model is alive and well according to M&G Investments. But with an influx of information, the fund manager is turning to a vendor to help make sense of it all.
This week, the fund manager – which holds £315 billion in assets under management globally – announced that it would be using Bloomberg’s Research Management Solutions (RMS Enterprise) to generate and distribute research insights faster. The two companies collaborated on the service’s development.
In the unbundled model, trading and research costs are separated, with the latter paid for by the company’s own resources. Initially mandated by MiFID II, in December 2024 the Listing Act rolled back the requirement and allowed research to be rebundled effective 5 June 2026.
Fabiana Fedeli, chief investment officer for equities, multi-asset and sustainability at M&G Investments, told Global Trading, “We pay and reward our providers using our own resources. In line with MIFID II, we are not allowed to reward third party research by allocating trades. We do perform a qualitative review on our third-party providers twice a year.”
Explaining how the firm structures its third-party research, she continued: “We have a list of approved providers that we consume from and our systems track our third-party research use as well as any unsolicited research offers. We have a dedicated team managing those provider relationships.”
M&G also generates its own research internally.
“Our analysts are evaluated based on the impact of their research on the investment outcomes. Such valuation also includes considerations such as quality of output, knowledge sharing and integration of sustainability considerations,” Fedeli said.
Through RMS Enterprise, M&G’s investment team will be able to combine the firm’s proprietary research with Bloomberg’s research library and market data.
The company states that this will improve research process consistency across its global locations, in addition to improving cross-asset insights and collaboration across teams.
Fedeli observed, “For active asset managers such as M&G, in-depth proprietary research represents a foundational tool to generate new investment opportunities globally and across all asset classes.”
RMS Enterprise also includes a system administration suite that can be used to accelerate research publication, integrating into M&G’s in-house systems to provide market data and internal content templates.
