About the Benchmark Management Workflow

The benchmark management workflow in Eagle Performance consists of these basic steps, which may vary according to your unique processing requirements:

1. Load data.
2. Configure the Performance Calculation report to calculate and commit single-period returns for standard industry indexes used as performance benchmarks.
3. Build custom benchmarks.
4. Configure the Performance Analysis report and/or Composite Analysis report to calculate and commit multi-period returns for standard and custom benchmarks and use benchmark data for analysis.
5. Publish the performance reports.

A brief description of each step follows.

Load Data

You can leverage Eagle's enterprise level workflow and operations tools to load data into Eagle's data warehouse. You can load general financial information, as well as performance related data and vendor-supplied index returns, weights, and durations from external systems, if available. Depending on how you plan to use the index data, you can load index data at the following levels:

• Total level index returns
• Total and segment level weights and returns
• Total, segment, and constituent level weights and returns

Eagle stores index information in a variety of database tables, but stores performance-related index returns and weights that you upload in the PERFORM database.

You can assign benchmarks when you load entity data used for performance measurement by identifying the benchmark to fund relationship, or can maintain benchmark assignments manually. You can assign any number of benchmarks to each portfolio, retail fund, or composite. For example, you can assign each portfolio a primary comparison index, a secondary comparison index, and a tertiary comparison index.

When assigning a benchmark to a fund, you can assign a standard industry index, a custom index you define using Eagle Performance, or another portfolio. You can create custom benchmarks, that is, custom indexes used as performance benchmarks, by defining the criteria used to calculate the custom benchmark returns, weights, and other performance data.

Configure the Performance Calculation Report

If certain performance information is not available for the indexes you upload from external sources, you can use the Performance Calculation report to calculate single-period performance data, such as higher level returns and weights. Eagle stores performance related index returns and weights in the PERFORM database. You can also display uploaded single-period index data in Performance Calculation reports to use as benchmark comparisons for portfolios, retail funds, and composites.

If you use the Performance Calculation report to calculate additional performance data for uploaded indexes, you can set up the report to automatically commit that performance data or to prevent automatic commitment. This allows you to commit data manually as part of your audit and control workflows, or to avoid commitment entirely under certain conditions.

For information about configuring the Performance Calculation report (which includes the Performance Returns, Dynamic NAV Returns, and Composite Weighted Returns report profiles) to calculate and/or display benchmark data for:

• Portfolios, see Performance Calculation.
• Retail funds, see Retail Fund Performance User Guide.
• Composites, see GIPS Composite Management User Guide.

Build Custom Benchmarks

You can use the Custom Index Builder to create performance data, that is, returns and weights, for custom benchmarks and store that data in the PERFORM database. You can submit this entity build process on a scheduled or manual basis.

You can use the Commit Journal to review the entity build results for each custom benchmark and access a report that can help you better understand the results and determine the steps you need to take to correct any issues. You can also verify the entity build results using the Performance Query Tool.

Configure the Performance Analysis and Composite Analysis Reports

The Performance Analysis report is used to calculate multi-period returns for portfolios, retail funds, and composites, as well as for their related benchmarks. You also use this report to perform equity and fixed income attribution analyses. The Composite Analysis report allows you to analyze GIPS composite dispersion and membership and calculates composite, constituent, and comparison benchmark returns over time.

In these reports, Eagle can use the single-period benchmark return data stored in the PERFORM database to calculate multi-period returns for benchmarks, along with other index data used for analysis. Eagle recommends storing multi-period returns in Eagle's Data Mart. See the /wiki/spaces/PS/pages/37992886 for detailed information.

Eagle's analysis and reporting tools can communicate performance information that reflects benchmark data in a variety of analyses. For example, you can use the Performance Analysis report to compare a fund to its benchmark by a variety of factors, such as sector, industry, duration, and quality. You can use Performance Analysis and Performance Query reports to compare relative returns over time for a fund and its benchmark. And you can use equity and fixed income attribution reports to attribute relative performance of a fund to its benchmark to various management effects.

For information about configuring Performance Analysis and Composite Analysis report profiles to calculate multi-period benchmark returns and/or use benchmark data in analysis for:

• Portfolios, see Performance Analysis and Reporting and the Attribution User Guide.
• Retail funds, see Retail Fund Performance User Guide.
• Composites, see the GIPS Composite Management User Guide.

Publish Performance Reports

You can use Eagle's analysis and reporting tools to communicate benchmark information to internal and external audiences. Eagle Performance includes standard reports that include benchmark comparisons and analyses as part of the Performance Toolkit, and lets you create customized reports for on-line drilldown analysis. You can create OLAP drill down reports, presentation-quality Advanced Reports, and/or Portal views that use information stored in Eagle's data warehouse or optionally, in Data Mart. You can also use the Performance Query Tool to analyze benchmark data.