And the lever that we’ve been pulling significantly is creating more and more efficiency, tightening up what we do with higher productivity, locating more and more of our staff to emerging market centers and the like. And that has allowed us to, as Andy said, increase the amount of investment that we can deploy in the business. We are extremely excited about AI and the utilization of AI to allow for an even larger amount of efficiencies, a lot of productivity in which we can free up more resources and again put it back into the investment of the business in all the growth areas that we’ve identified.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Heather Balsky with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Heather Balsky: Hi, good morning. Well, I guess it’s almost good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. I just wanted to ask a little bit about Index and market share. We get incoming questions from investors asking about where you guys fit in, in terms of the broader market. And I’m curious, from your perspective, what are – where do you see the wallet share opportunities? And then what are you monitoring in terms of some of your competitors gaining share? Thanks so much.
Baer Pettit: Yes. Thanks for the question. Well, look, we clearly have pretty transparent statistics on that in the ETF market, which we discussed, and those have been fairly stable. It’s quite difficult to judge this in a lot of the subscription market. There’s not really transparent data that shows us exactly what’s happening. So the key thing that we try to focus on is ensuring that we are continuing to maintain our growth rates in some of our key segments, as you can see from the numbers that we put out quarter-after-quarter, but more importantly, is trying to be innovative about some of the opportunities that have been central to our growth that have been a big theme throughout our comments today. The customization area is dramatic in all client types, and we’re investing in that both organically and through these – some of these acquisitions that we’re looking at, even if they’re bolt-on ones.
So I think as we get – our big driver is to be innovative in new segments with customization. And if we do that, I think we can continue to have the leading position in the industry that we have. And then I think the other one that I would say is a key focus is global geographic diversification. This is an enormous strength of our franchise, and we’ve seen that in the numbers. As we continue to grow in all geographies in Index, notwithstanding the fact that in many of those geographies over the last number of quarters, equity markets have been in the doldrums more than they’ve been in the U.S. But we still continue to put in strong performances in subscription growth. So I think overall, we kind of look at how we’re innovating. We – I could say things anecdotally about competition, but I don’t think they’re going to be helpful.
So it’s mostly focusing on what we do well and serving clients and innovating. And if we keep doing that, I’m confident that we can maintain our growth trajectory.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Craig Huber with Huber Research Partners. Please go ahead.
Craig Huber: Great. Thank you. I wanted to hear your thoughts on your sales force. Your sales force has obviously been very effective, very efficient over many, many years. You guys highlighted part of that today with all the cross-selling that they’ve been doing and stuff. And I’m just curious, your plans for internal investment spending this year, does it include any extra spending level that you – above and beyond what you normally would do on the sales force throughout your organization for this upcoming year? I’m just trying to get a sense on that because it seems like a pretty good opportunity you guys to lean further into that. I’m just curious what your thought is on that. Thank you.
Baer Pettit: Look, it’s a great question. So as you know, Henry is our lead salesman now. And he spends an enormous amount of his time with clients, which has had a huge impact in our senior relationships. I am myself a retired Global Head of Client Coverage to MSCI. And our current Global Head of Client Coverage, Alvise Munari, is doing a great job. And so I think it’s both a question of scale and reach, which we really focused on, but it’s also really important to be creative and innovative. And as we look across a given order, like the one we have today, the diversity of transactions, of different client types, different geographies, different use cases, all of that comes from our client coverage organization, really having that DNA of finding out new use cases, new opportunities, which I think is really central to how we operate.
So – and then for sure, we will continue to invest in our client coverage organization, in salespeople, in consultants and client service. Now we’re also very focused on the productivity of the organization, and that’s a key component to ensuring we continue to invest. But this is really – when we think of investments, we definitely think of our client organization and its reach and scale as being central to our future trajectory. So happy to take a longer discussion off-line, but it’s absolutely central to what we think is a great strength of MSCI.
Henry Fernandez: Let me add something else here that the area – MSCI has progressed significantly in many, many areas. The one area that I feel the most proud of – or proudest, I guess, of is the incredible level of reach and dialogue that we have with clients all over the world. It’s not only at the user level. Traditionally, in the past, MSCI is sold by a subject matter expert to – of MSCI selling directly into a user at the client organization. What we now have done in addition to that is build very deep and very wide relationship with the CEOs and the CIOs and all that because we’re conscious that we’re increasing our wallet share or mind share with a lot of these clients. And we need a lot of support from the top-down in understanding what we’re doing and how we can add value and partner up with our client organizations.
The client coverage organization, Alvise Munari is I think 1,200 professionals by now, so significant expansion because of some of the acquisitions that we have made, which have added a lot of salespeople. And the key focus there is industrial scale, is trying to figure out how to continue to grow that client coverage organization in a manner that it is tightening up the organizational structure, the organizational design, the roles, the responsibilities. We’re putting a lot of technology and a lot of data in understanding how the – what the clients buying, how are they buying, managing the pipeline and so on and so forth. So I think we have a lot of runway to benefit from in reaching out to more clients. This is going to become especially important because we’re scaling up significantly to new areas.
Wealth management, it’s a lot of wealth management organizations around the world. Corporates, there are thousands and thousands of corporate entities around the world, right? Insurance companies, the general partners of equity – private equity firm, private credit firm, private infrastructure, private debt firms and the like. So really, really exciting, a lot of what we’re doing.
