The Community offers participating hedge funds a secure way to communicate trusted risk information to their institutional investors free of charge.

Given the recent volatile market conditions, demand for hedge funds to provide risk transparency to investors has never been higher. Through the HedgePlatform Community, RiskMetrics Group will provide access to its research, methodologies, data, and analytics to all qualified hedge funds for purposes of monthly investor reporting. In addition, hedge funds will have access to an interactive application to configure the monthly investor reports.

Hedge funds can select the investors to which they report risk information and choose the level of granularity they wish to distribute. Built on core RiskMetrics' products, the HedgePlatform Community allows hedge funds to deliver the same risk information trusted by the world's largest hedge funds for their own internal risk management needs.

"The launch of the HedgePlatform Community marks the start of an exciting new RiskMetrics Group initiative," said Brian Schmid, head of RiskMetrics Group's Alternative Investments Business Strategy. "In today's market environment, the HedgePlatform Community is all about providing risk transparency and building trust in the alternative investment business."

Investors who become members of the HedgePlatform Community can access RiskMetrics' premium products such as Reporting, RiskManager and Portfolio Pilot to leverage the risk information hedge fund members' supply. Aggregation, portfolio construction, interactivity, and compliance reporting such as RIC, UCITs III, and Basel II are just a few examples of the features available.

RiskMetrics Group will be extending invitations this year to all qualified hedge funds and will expand the definition of a qualified hedge fund in 2009.