The latest version of its Web-based risk analysis tool, BarraOne 1.4 provides investors in Asia with a powerful and flexible framework to analyze portfolio risk and enhance investment decisions. Leveraging the power of the Barra Integrated Model™, BarraOne is ideal for portfolio managers, risk managers and plan sponsors, providing an intuitive, consistent analysis for domestic as well as global, multi-asset class portfolios.

Professional investors managing Asian portfolios can now make full use of the benefits of Barra's industry-leading risk and portfolio management analytics.
Easy to use and deploy, BarraOne offers:

- Flexible risk analysis: Explore the risk and fundamental characteristics of your portfolio along the unique dimensions of your own investment process

- Ease of use and low maintenance: Intuitive, Web-based interface and ASP delivery eliminate the need to manage large databases and software installations

- Value At Risk (VaR) or Standard Deviation: Flexible system provides risk in the form of standard deviation or VaR for absolute risk and tracking error.

Powered by the Barra Integrated Model, BarraOne provides both global perspective and local depth. Industry and style factors (for equities) and term structure and spread factors (for fixed income) are based on the local characteristics of each country. Each model is then integrated into a global framework for unified, yet granular analysis. This methodology allows BarraOne to recognize both global influences and purely local effects. Despite the increasing globalization of capital markets, the factors that influence equity and fixed income returns continue to differ across countries. For example, in Thailand, Barra captures the impact of family control in a firm with a 'Family Control factor'. Similarly, for Hong Kong securities, Barra distinguishes China-affiliated corporations with a 'Redchip' factor. These unique local factors capture real-world market forces, but need not exist in other markets.

"A global model that does not consider this kind of detail in each local market is unmistakably missing real influences on security returns, and therefore is less accurate in predicting portfolio risk and its sources," said Olivier d'Assier, vice president of Asia/Pacific sales at Barra. "Armed with more accurate and more complete information, asset managers can make better investment decisions and produce more consistent returns for their clients."

Multi-asset class risk systems have traditionally been prohibitively expensive for most asset managers. As a result, many rely on equity-only and fixed income-only solutions, and are unable to analyze the aggregate risk of a balanced portfolio. BarraOne's Web-based, multi-asset class system solves this problem by reducing the total cost of ownership and delivering an accessible, integrated analysis for balanced portfolios.