The release builds upon FirstRain's premium research service to represent the next generation of web-based intelligence for the financial community.

FirstRain Financial supports the specific research needs of institutional investors unlike any application or platform currently available. The rich knowledgebase incorporates five dimensions of value for asset managers - global market coverage, investment-centric topics, authoritative online sources, market models and relationship mapping, and methodologies - to fill the gap in their qualitative research process. Using FirstRain Financial, investment professionals can efficiently navigate through an extensive reserve of online data, quickly finding and investigating information vital to their idea-generation, trend analysis, investment strategies, and portfolio maintenance.

The new release also extends FirstRain's coverage and service to encompass a global market perspective. Expanded coverage now includes the predominant global institutional holdings - top eighty percent of institutionally held and traded stocks - across every industry and sector in 41 countries, as well as companies with US-listed ADRs (Level 2 and 3), emerging investment markets, and worldwide economic and industry influencers.

"The explosion of online information has dramatically increased the need for targeted, relevant information by institutional investors. They face the impossible task of staying ahead of developing global market trends so they cannot afford to miss insightful information that impacts their investments. FirstRain Financial harnesses the power of the web in a way that is meaningful to these professionals," said Penny Herscher, president and CEO of FirstRain. "We have developed this sophisticated knowledgebase as an integral part of our research solution. It will empower our clients to dynamically engage with information from the web like never before."

FirstRain Financial models the complex relationships and connections between industries, companies, and markets so investment professionals can easily see the market context of information extracted from the web. For example, FirstRain Financial may highlight the connection between a particular U.S. holding and an interview in an obscure Southeast Asian business magazine with a CEO from a competitor company that discusses overseas expansion plans. The combination of the knowledgebase and enhanced global coverage offers investment professionals a more robust solution for their research process.

FirstRain Financial will be available to existing and new FirstRain financial services customers this summer.