Market data is not a decision system.
Capital IQ is the institutional standard for public-comparable data, screening, and benchmarking. Capital Refinery is the structured record of the investment decision after the screen returns its results. The two answer different questions and sit at completely different layers of the stack.
What Capital IQ does well, and where the line is.
What Capital IQ is built for
Public-comparable data, screening, and benchmark coverage at institutional scale.
Decades of fundamentals, the canonical comparable set, transaction multiples, ratings, and a mature screen builder. For deal teams sourcing and benchmarking against the public market, the dataset is the institutional standard. The product is mature, the coverage is deep, and the workflow integrations are universal.
What it is not built for
Holding the IC decision as a structured testable record.
Capital IQ is a market-data layer. It has no schema for the thesis, the conditions, or the assumptions a deal team relied on at IC. It cannot test this quarter's operator data against the entry case, because the entry case was never bound to anything inside Capital IQ. It is upstream of the decision, not the decision itself.
Where Capital Refinery sits next to it
Underneath the IC stage, on the other side of close.
Capital IQ is the source for comparables that go into the model. Capital Refinery takes the resulting investment decision and binds it to the operator data the firm collects after close. Most teams will keep both — they sit at completely different layers of the stack.
Where the lines fall.
| Capability | S&P Capital IQ | Capital Refinery |
|---|---|---|
| Public market and comparable data | Strong — institutional standard | No — different layer |
| Screening and benchmarking | Strong | No |
| Domain model for the IC decision | No | Yes — first-class object |
| Structured investment record at IC | No | Yes — bound at approval |
| Operator data → entry assumption mapping | No | Yes — the data model |
| Decision validity scoring | No | Yes — across the life of the position |
Your team will keep Capital IQ. The question is what holds the decision.
Bring us a deal you sourced from a Capital IQ screen. We will show you the structured decision layer the market-data stack was not designed to produce.