Voya Investment Management (IM), the asset management business of Voya Financial, Inc. (NYSE: VOYA), announced today that it has acquired the technology and hired the founding team of G Squared Capital LLP (“G2”), a London-based investment manager that serves institutions and other sophisticated investors. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed and are not material to Voya’s financial position.
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G2 is a pioneer in applying machine intelligence to fundamental investing. Their proprietary technology is built to identify persistent patterns in company data. Since founding the firm in 2011, the G2 team has earned a reputation for designing innovative, niche and highly customized investment solutions.
As a result of this transaction, G2’s principals, Dr. Gareth Shepherd, Gabriel Andraos and Yana Kramer, will form the new Equity Machine Intelligence (EMI) group within Voya IM’s Quantitative Equities business. Based in London, they will report to Vincent Costa, head of Quantitative Equity for Voya IM.
“This transaction supports our focus on building best-in-class equity portfolios that meet our clients’ long-term investment needs. Further, our new EMI team has the knowledge base and tools to accelerate Voya’s efforts to incorporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in our investment selection process,” said Michael Pytosh, head of Equities, Voya IM.
Under Shepherd and Andraos, the EMI team will continue to build out its unique alternative approach to equity investing, while offering new active equity and ESG-integrated solutions. The aim is to deliver specialized investment strategies that combine the breadth and dynamism of quantitative equity investing with the depth and rigor normally reserved for top human managers.
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EMI’s investment engine is driven by a team of machine learning-based “virtual” analysts, traders and portfolio managers that apply hundreds of proprietary signals across multiple investment horizons and thousands of securities. The result is a portfolio that has delivered consistent alpha that is uncorrelated to more traditional equity factors.
In addition to alpha-generating strategies with global coverage, G2’s approach brings innovations in mass-product customization and model interpretability — building a bridge between traditionally disparate fundamental and quantitative disciplines.
“This team is a great cultural fit and aligns with our long-term strategic objectives to continue to invest in our quantitative investment capabilities and bolster the data and analytics that underpin all of the investment strategies on the equity platform,” said Costa. “Their technology, research and development advances our current platform, and brings advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques, increasingly seen as the next frontier for asset managers.”
With the addition of the G2 team, Voya IM’s quantitative team consists of 13 investment professionals and manages over $24 billion in assets. Voya IM’s fundamental and quantitative equity teams have a long history of developing proprietary multi-factor sector models together.
