Scientific Beta is pleased to announce that it has won the prestigious Risk Award for "Indexing Firm of the Year 2019" at the annual awards ceremony held at the Brewery in London on November 27. The Risk Awards are the longest-running and most prestigious awards for firms and individuals involved in the global derivatives markets and in risk management. 

Accepting the prize, Scientific Beta CEO, Professor Noël Amenc, said, "It is particularly pleasing for Scientific Beta to be recognised for its work in the area of risk management for smart beta indices, because this is something that we have always prioritised in the development of our indices. Our view is that investors have a fiduciary responsibility to manage risk and our role and duty is to provide them with appropriate risk diversification and non-factor risk-control mechanisms such as our market-beta-adjustment and sector-neutral options. We think that the search for smart beta outperformance should not sacrifice the sound risk management of such strategies and it is probably this sound risk management that allows an index or a factor or alternative weighting strategy to be qualified as 'smart'."

Scientific Beta launched six years ago with the missions of maximising the impact of EDHEC Business School's academic research in the indexing space. The organisation started with 12 people; now it has 50 and is hiring more. Scientific Beta's assets under replication were USD 34bn at the end of June and are projected to exceed USD 40bn by the end of the year. 

This business impact of an academic venture has no equivalent. EDHEC Business School, whose finance courses are regularly ranked among the best in the world in the international rankings, has been able to mobilise researchers to go beyond education and allow fast adoption of the results of its research in the area of smart beta and factor investing.