MSCI (NYSE:MSCI) executives and UBS analyst Alex Cramm discussed the company’s growth outlook, business momentum, and product priorities at a recent UBS conference, with CFO Andrew Wiechmann pointing to continued demand for indexing, analytics, and private markets tools even as sustainability-related demand remains uneven.
Positioning MSCI for long-term growth
Wiechmann framed MSCI as “the intellectual infrastructure of the investment universe,” describing the company’s role in providing benchmarks, standards, and analytics used to allocate assets, track performance, measure risk, and build investment strategies. He cited broad industry trends—growth in global savings and investable assets, increasing strategy personalization, and rising complexity in risk and geopolitical considerations—as drivers of greater need for MSCI’s index frameworks, multi-asset analytics, and private asset insights.
What drove recent strength: client segments and product innovation
Wiechmann attributed the strong fourth quarter in part to a faster cadence of product and capability releases. He also said the company has seen elevated growth from client segments including hedge funds, trading firms, broker-dealers, as well as increased activity with asset owners, wealth managers, and insurers. While those latter segments are smaller contributors to overall revenue today, he said go-to-market investments and product innovations tailored to their use cases are beginning to “unlock those opportunities in size.”
He added that asset managers also contributed to fourth-quarter strength, which he described as encouraging, and noted that index and private assets—specifically Private Capital Solutions (PCS)—were areas of product-side acceleration.
Retention and pricing: focus on stickiness and value delivery
On retention, Wiechmann said MSCI’s retention tends to be higher when clients use multiple products across several product segments, and he emphasized upselling, ongoing product enhancements, and stronger account management as levers to improve stickiness. He said MSCI has seen benefits from strategic coverage of its largest clients and is expanding that approach across more client segments.
On pricing, Wiechmann said the company believes it is “in a good place” on price increases, describing client health, usage, and value delivered as key inputs. He said the contribution to new sales from price increases has been “relatively steady” in recent periods, supported by product enhancements that help clients operate more efficiently and extract more data and insights.
Index and analytics: momentum, with ESG a headwind and international flows a tailwind
Discussing indexes, Wiechmann said the business has “double-digit growth potential,” noting fourth-quarter index subscription run-rate growth of 9.4%, up from 9% the prior quarter and 8.4% a year earlier. He said one factor that had previously boosted index growth—rapid expansion in ESG-related modules—has slowed and is now a smaller contributor, which has weighed on overall index subscription growth rates.
At the same time, he pointed to demand from the “trading ecosystem” for uses such as baskets, structured products, over-the-counter derivatives, and index arbitrage strategies. He also cited increasing use of index content by wealth firms (including model portfolios), opportunities in fixed index annuities (FIA), greater internalization of investing processes by asset owners, and more systematic strategy development by asset managers. He said custom indexing accelerated in the most recent quarter and remains an area where MSCI is “very bullish.”
Wiechmann also addressed international flows, noting record ETF inflows linked to MSCI indexes in the fourth quarter. He said inflows totaled more than $200 billion during 2025 and exceeded $50 billion in January and early February. He said flows have been “heavily” directed toward international exposures such as EAFE, emerging markets, and single-country variants, and argued that increased focus on international markets can support demand not only for market-cap indexes but also factor indexes and risk models.
On analytics, Wiechmann said there was nothing notable behind fourth-quarter sales softness, characterizing results as sometimes lumpy due to deal timing. He pointed to sustained strength in factor models and said MSCI has posted “solid double-digit growth” in equity analytics for several quarters, benefiting from multi-strategy hedge fund growth. He also said there are early signs of adoption by front-office users at traditional asset managers, beyond the risk function MSCI has historically served.
Sustainability, private assets, and AI: uneven demand, early-stage opportunity, and productivity gains
On sustainability and climate, Wiechmann said demand is more muted in pockets of the Americas, with clients cautious about purchases and even communications around sustainability efforts. However, he cited areas of growth including physical risk insights and geospatial, AI-enabled insights, as well as corporate sustainability insights—particularly outside the U.S. He added that MSCI is gaining share as some clients consolidate providers, though he described the segment as being in a “transition phase” likely to continue near-term dynamics seen in recent quarters.
In private assets, Wiechmann said MSCI has faced cyclical headwinds in real assets due to declines in commercial real estate transaction activity, which affects parts of the business tied to developers, brokers, and lenders. He noted “green shoots,” including increased capital in areas such as office and retail, and said MSCI has seen traction in offerings like Index Intel.
For PCS, he acknowledged that growth has come down from expectations outlined around the Burgiss acquisition, saying it “fell down into the teens” but ticked up to 15% growth in the most recent quarter. He said MSCI has been enhancing product and go-to-market capabilities, pointing to tools such as benchmarks, classification standards, liquidity insights, and credit risk, alongside international go-to-market progress in EMEA and APAC.
Wiechmann also emphasized AI as an enabler for both efficiency and new products. He said AI has driven “notable improvements” in cost to produce data, including a 30%+ improvement in cost per data point in areas such as private markets, and has helped MSCI rapidly expand coverage—for example, building a private credit transparency service more quickly. He added that MSCI had about $10 million of sales in 2025 from “true AI-enabled tools,” and described work toward a more integrated “total portfolio” solution where clients could query portfolios and build custom baskets or indexes tied to specified objectives.
On expenses, Wiechmann said MSCI’s guidance assumes AUM levels are relatively flat in the first half of the year with gradual increases in the second half, and that the company will calibrate spending based on markets, business performance, and emerging opportunities. On capital allocation, he said MSCI takes an opportunistic approach to share repurchases based on cash, volatility, and valuation considerations, and remains selective on M&A, focusing on bolt-on deals that accelerate capabilities in areas such as private assets, unique content sets, and custom indexing.
About MSCI (NYSE:MSCI)
MSCI Inc is a global provider of investment decision support tools and services for the financial industry. The company is best known for its family of market indexes, which are widely used as benchmarks by asset managers and as the basis for exchange-traded funds and other passive products. In addition to index construction and licensing, MSCI offers portfolio analytics, risk models, factor and performance attribution tools, and a suite of data and technology solutions designed to support portfolio management and trading.
Beyond traditional indexing and risk analytics, MSCI has expanded into environmental, social and governance (ESG) research and ratings, offering data, scores and screening tools that help investors integrate sustainability considerations into investment processes.
