Russell Investment Group is planning to launch a fully-integrated family of global stock indices in the fourth quarter.

The new Russell Global Equity Indices will provide investors worldwide with a comprehensive set of country, region and industry benchmarks, covering small-cap and large-cap companies in developed and emerging markets, the firm announced.

“The same pioneering index methodology that provides investors with objective and transparent tools to accurately measure distinct segments of the U.S. stock market will soon be extended globally,” said David Grieger, managing director, Russell Indices. “We’ve listened to clients in the 44 countries where Russell does business and they want the same objective, cohesive and consistent framework globally for measuring their investment performance.”

Grieger added that Russell aims to satisfy the growing demand for better global index benchmarks from large U.S. plan sponsors as well as investment consultants, money managers and private wealth professionals who manage international assets. The new benchmarks will provide investors with comprehensive coverage of each country’s market and 98% of the ingestible global market.

“We originally created the U.S. indexes as tools to help clients more accurately measure the performance of investment managers, and now we’re marshalling our knowledge and experience as global investment managers and index providers to develop global equity indexes,” said Ron Bundy, director, Russell Indexes. “We’ve listened to the market to better understand what they want from a leading set of global indexes, and now we’re developing an integrated set of benchmarks to surpass those needs.”

The firm says that its index methodology has led to more assets benchmarked to Russell’s U.S. index family than all other U.S. equity indexes combined. Its U.S. indexes currently have $3.8 trillion in assets benchmarked to them and account for 52% of assets benchmarked by U.S. institutional investors, according to Russell’s examination of 2,954 U.S. equity products listed in Nelson Information’s Marketplace Web database.

“The indices are our quantitative yardstick. The more realistic the picture, the better the analysis of manager or fund performance,” said Bundy. “While most investors will have difficulty replicating our qualitative evaluation, the indexes allow everyone to use the same quantitative benchmarks that we use.”