Barra, Reuters’ Lipper Team Up To Offer Risk Factor Data

Barra and Lipper, a Reuters subsidiary, have released the Lipper-Barra Mutual Fund Risk Factor service, which ranks the relative riskiness of mutual funds. The service is aimed at allowing investors and their advisors to compare competitive or complementary funds on the basis of the risks that they incur. The measure is based on Barra’s risk models and Lipper’s mutual fund holdings database, and aims to provide a single forecast risk number for each fund monitored. The Lipper-Barra Mutual Fund Risk Factor aims to plug a gap in the market for a reliable predictor of future risk.