Philosophy

Our perspective

We think that all stakeholders in the global economy have underestimated the importance of country-level dynamics as a driver of performance of both markets and economies.

We think that existing tools for understanding country risk are fundamentally flawed because they:

Fail to provide direct and detailed comparability across countries.

Fail to create the correct linkages between different aspects of country strength and weakness.

Fail to cover all countries with equal depth, leading those that are the least researched to be perceived as the greatest risk.

Have not been proven to help investors deliver superior returns.

Do not make clear to policymakers how they can reduce the risk their country represents.

We think that a country view and a global macro view are different things and different people should provide them.

Our aims

To create value by helping investors, strategists and risk-takers appreciate the importance of country risk and integrate into their decision making.

To improve country prosperity by helping policymakers cheaply and effectively improve their countries performance and helping markets reward good policy.

To change the way people assess country risk and opportunity by moving from subjective judgement to quantitative analytical rigour.

To make markets more effecient by enabling them to systematically and accurately price country risk.

Our approach

At the core of our approach is a belief in eradicating human bias.

We do not expect to be taken seriously just because we are "experts".

Not based on statistical optimisation—built from the ground up based on economic expertise.

We do not try to predict macro trends—we assess internal risks and a country’s ability to respond to macro trends.

We use a broad range of data. This enables us to cover many small countries because the model tolerates individual omissions and errors.

We seek to measure objective outputs, not inputs or subjective assessments.

We do not expect our clients to accept a single number for risk and face value. We can decompose our analysis at multiple levels (3 pillars, 17 factors, and 58 sub-factors) to show exactly what is driving our conclusions.

We are not experts in market prices—our investment clients are—we are experts on countries.

We only provide analysis that we can demonstrate adds value.