The challenge for most firms is not the research they produce. It is whether that research reaches its audience in a format will actually be consumed.
Deutsche Bank Research publishes across thousands of securities, multiple regions and dozens of languages. The research is differentiated. The harder question – and the one Pam Finelli, Global COO at Deutsche Bank Research, addressed at the Communify Intelligence Experience – is what happens between the research being written and the client acting on it.
That gap is where most of the value gets lost. A long-only allocator does not read every note. A hedge fund does not have time for a five-year outlook. Every client cares about a different subset of the firm’s intelligence, on a different cadence, in a different format. The default response – more email, more PDFs, more reports – does not solve for that. It compounds the problem.
The opportunity, as Finelli describes it, is not to publish more. It is to take the research the firm already produces and bring it to clients in the formats those clients actually use today.Audio. A score. A signal. A narrative they can finish in two minutes.
4 Ways Asset Managers Can Reach Every Client With the Research They Already Produce
Finelli’s argument is unusually clean for a research COO. The back end has to work – of course. But the front end is where the relationship is built or lost. Here are four moves any asset manager can make to bring existing research to life, drawn from the framework Deutsche Bank has built.
- Treat research as the start of a client conversation, not the end product
Finelli described research as a “flywheel” – the asset that opens conversations, builds expertise in a specific market segment and earns the firm a deeper seat at the client’s investment table. The firms that win on relationships are not the ones publishing the most. They are the ones whose research is starting the conversations that turn into mandates. When research is treated as a reporting obligation, it gets read once and filed. When it is treated as a relationship engine, every piece works harder.
- Bring written research into audio your clients will actually listen to
A personalized podcast that once would have required an analyst to read a full statement, research the relevant markets and record it in a studio can now be generated in seconds from the research the firm already publishes. Client commutes, gym sessions, between-meeting walks – these are touchpoints the PDF report cannot reach. Research Podcasts turn a firm’s written commentary and CIO notes into a daily audio touchpoint, drawn directly from the verified Knowledge Base and built around the holdings and themes each client actually cares about.
- Distill research into a single credible Score for the clients who will not read 40 pages
Not every client will read a long-form thesis. They will look at one number. MacroScore™ – powered by the Economist Intelligence Unit, rated the number one forecast accuracy provider from more than 400 institutions globally – delivers a 0–100 macro risk read on any market in real time. MicroScore™ does the same at the company level, built from 300+ verified factors across fundamentals, performance and sentiment. Together they form StockScore™ – the complete picture in a single, credible number. Scores do not replace the research. They make it accessible to the clients who need a faster read.
- Let clients pull the research they want, in the cadence they want it
Pushing the same content to every client is the opposite of personalization. Finelli was direct on this: Deutsche Bank lets clients filter research by stock, sector, region and language – and choose the schedule that works for them. Putting that control in the client’s hands increases the perceived relevance of everything they do receive. Signals make it real-time: when a thesis is tested by a market event, the right client hears about it in the moment, not the morning after.
How Communify Brings Existing Research to Life on Your Platform
The framework Finelli describes – existing research, delivered in the formats clients actually use – requires a specific kind of infrastructure underneath. Here is how Communifymakes that work:
- Research Podcasts – turn written commentary, CIO notes and research reports into a personalized audio briefing for each client. Built on the verified Knowledge Base and powered by MIND™ AI, the same research a firm publishes once becomes a daily touchpoint that reaches clients where they already listen.
- MacroScore™, MicroScore™ and StockScore™ – distill the firm’s research into a single credible number. MacroScore™ runs on EIU data, MicroScore™ on 300+ verified factors, StockScore™ on both. Scores give every client a fast, drillable read on the markets and companies the firm covers – without asking them to read every note.
- Signals and Stories™ – Signals surface the specific market events most relevant to each client’s portfolio, watchlist or interest area. Stories™ wrap those signals in a chapter-by-chapter narrative – 90%+ of users who start a Story™ read it to the end, and users who finish are twice as likely to act. Together they give your clients the right insight at the right moment, in the format that lands.
- The Knowledge Base and MIND™ AI – every output above sits on the industry’s most comprehensive unified source of market and client data: 4,000+ feeds from 175+ providers, processing 9 billion+ data requests daily. MIND™ AI combines deterministic proprietary engines with leading LLMs, and the Proof of Dimension (P.O.D.) framework ensures every output is accurate, auditable and trustworthy at scale. The research a firm already publishes becomes the input. The intelligence layer does the rest.
Research Distribution Is the Asset Manager’s Differentiator in the Intelligence Era
The asset managers that move ahead in the Intelligence Era will not be the ones publishing the most research. They will be the ones whose platforms reach every client with the research the firm already produces – in the format, on the cadence and at the moment that lands.
Pam Finelli’s framing is one any research-led firm can apply. The intelligence is already there. The opportunity is in the delivery.
Communify is built to make that delivery possible at scale – ensuring the right research reaches the right client at the right moment, every time. Ready to see what that looks like for your platform? Book a demo with Communify.
