FOCUS

from the Financial Management for the Future (FM4F) research group, has gone live and already shows great promises. The company aims to propose a disruptive and value proposition is simple: unlike absolutely all fund rating systems (Morningstar, S&P, Europerformance), SAFIR puts the client – thus the investor – at the center of the rating all its complexity (risk aversion, behavioral aspects, sensitivity to ESG criteria) in order to assess its quality. This means that for the same portfolio, there will be as many ratings as

SOPIAD (Socrates Portfolio-Investor Adequacy), the Management for the Future (FM4F) research group, has gone live and already shows great promises. The company aims to propose a disruptive and path-breaking customer-centric diagnostic system for is simple: unlike absolutely all fund rating systems (Morningstar, S&P, Europerformance), SAFIR puts the client – thus the investor – at the center of the rating personal portfolio, or even a virtual investment), the associated rating explicitly takes into account the pro behavioral aspects, sensitivity to ESG criteria) in order to assess its quality. This means that for the same portfolio, there will be as many ratings as there are T allowing a genuine industrialization of a fully individualized portfolio diagnostic tool, which meets an important challenge in the asset management and investment advisory industries. The company will provide an interface match between the client and the portfolio. In order to gain attention from the investment community, SOPIAD will soon publish its own ratings for a wide range of portfolios, delivered to mutual by one of its competitors. On top of the investor-centric portfolio diagnostics, SOPIAD future performance of mutual funds on the basis of their past data. The – credible – quest for this kind of ‘holy grail’ in asset management is made possible thanks to the research formerly carried out by Philippe Cogneau and Georges Hübner and published in the Journal of Banking and Finance (2015) and Revue Finance (2020). This ambitious research program, that will ultimately lead to a pathbreaking fund selection engine, will be supervised by Cédric Gillain, who is currently completing his Ph.D. dissertation at FM4F. development inside HEC Liège under the supervision of Prof. Georges Hübner, thanks Region, the company was created last March. It is managed by Pierre Nemeth (CEO) and Simon Taquet (COO), both alumni from HEC.

The fundraising process has been overwhelmingly successful, with capital commitments from several institutional investors and experienced business angels, leading to a seed capital of ca. € 2 million. The company is in a good way to signing valuable strategic partnerships particularly solid, with a strong Board of Directors and expert committees that will back the development of the Financial Solutions (2007), which was ultimately taken over by BNP Paribas Asset Management ten years later and that is now a successful and well-established Fintech, SOPIAD has the ambition of being an ambitious new ambassador of HEC Liège and its expertise in Financial Management. We bet that many students and alumni will participate to its development and, hopefully, its success in the world of