What Is a Consultant Database — and How Consultants Actually Use Them
- Brent Watters
- Jan 19
- 3 min read
The biggest risk isn’t rejection — it’s invisibility.
Relationship building still matters in institutional asset management. But today, relationships rarely open the door on their own. Structured investment data does.
Consultant databases became core infrastructure for institutional manager research in the late 1990s and early 2000s. What began as record-keeping systems have evolved into the primary starting point for institutional discovery.
Today, consultant databases are not optional tools or administrative repositories. They are search engines for investor capital. Managers who are not represented, or are poorly represented, are often excluded before a conversation ever begins, resulting in missed opportunities for discovery, brand awareness, and asset growth.
How Consultants Actually Use Databases
When an investment consultant begins a manager search, the process is highly consistent:
A mandate or investment need is defined
Structured filters are applied within a database
The database returns a list of eligible managers
Only then does deeper analysis begin
These initial filters are typically quantitative and categorical, such as:
Strategy classification
Assets under management range
Track record length
Geographic focus
Risk and return metrics
Liquidity terms
If a manager’s data does not meet the criteria, or if required data is missing, that manager simply does not appear. There is no alert, notification, or feedback. The exclusion is silent.
Visibility Is Binary at the Search Stage
At the earliest stage of consultant discovery, visibility is not a ranking exercise. It is a qualification exercise.
You are either:
Returned in the search results
Or excluded entirely
At this stage, consultants are not evaluating narrative, philosophy, or differentiation. They are determining eligibility.
Performance, process, and qualitative review come later—but only if the manager passes the initial screen. This is why database reporting quality matters far more than many managers realize.
Why Reporting Quality Has a Long-Term Impact
A single consultant relationship can influence:
Multiple asset owners
Multiple mandates
Multiple allocation cycles over time
This is why database reporting often feels frustrating. The impact is indirect, delayed, and difficult to trace. But absence from the process carries a very real, and compounding, opportunity cost.
Where the Data Comes From — and Why That Matters
Consultant databases rely on multiple data sources, but managers themselves are the primary contributors. The accuracy, completeness, and structure of manager-provided data directly influence how firms appear—or fail to appear—in searches.
Managers are typically responsible for supplying structured information such as:
Performance history and benchmarks
Risk and return metrics
Strategy and product attributes
Liquidity terms and vehicle details
Firm-level information and assets under management
Databases may supplement this information with third-party data from providers such as Bloomberg, FactSet, Refinitiv, or S&P Global. However, these sources do not replace manager-reported data. They augment it.
In practice, what a consultant sees—and can filter—is largely driven by what the manager submits, and how well it aligns with database requirements.
Why Many Managers Struggle to Keep Databases Updated
Maintaining accurate database reporting has become increasingly difficult, particularly for alternative managers with lean teams and complex strategies.
Common challenges include:
Frequent deadlines Databases require regular updates—often monthly or quarterly—during peak reporting cycles with tight turnaround times.
Growing data complexity As strategies diversify and alternatives grow, managers must manage larger volumes of structured and unstructured data across products and vehicles.
Inconsistent formats across databases Each consultant database has its own taxonomy, definitions, and structure, making one-to-one reporting inefficient and error-prone.
Ongoing data maintenance Investment data changes constantly and must be monitored, validated, and refreshed to remain accurate.
As a result, many managers find themselves spending significant time updating data without clear insight into whether their reporting actually improves visibility.
Where Alt-Centrix Fits
Alt-Centrix was built to address this exact challenge.
It provides alternative managers with a clean, centralized, and fast way to prepare and manage data aligned to consultant database requirements, helping reduce manual effort, surface gaps, and support consistent submissions across multiple databases.
Alt-Centrix is not a consultant database. It is an infrastructure that supports institutional discovery. LEARN MORE
The Takeaway
Acquisitions by firms such as Nasdaq and BlackRock underscore that institutional data platforms are viewed as long-term infrastructure, not niche solutions. They are the gate through which institutional consideration begins. Understanding how they work, and how your data is used, is the first step toward ensuring your firm is not quietly excluded from the searches that shape asset growth.
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