Barra Inc. has introduced the Barra Risk Factor, a financial risk assessment tool designed for the brokerage industry.

Risk Factor allows stockbrokers, investment advisors and other retail investment professionals to compare the relative volatility, or risk, of an individual stock to facilitate more informed investment decisions.

The browser-based tool produces a simple, comparative risk number for any of more than 10,000 publicly-traded U.S. stocks. The Risk Factor result, which is based on Barra’s leading multiple factor model calculations, places any stock in a percentile ranking and compares its risk to its industry, sector or the broad market.

“Risk Factor is a tailored version of Barra’s industry-leading risk valuation models developed for investment professionals serving the retail market,” explained Joe Lanza, head of the Risk Factor product effort at Barra. “The result is a clear measure of risk that investment professionals will find invaluable.”

ILX Systems, a provider of real-time equity terminals, has adopted Barra Risk Factor. ILX will integrate and distribute Risk Factor to its 160,000 retail broker subscribers a Barra Risk Factor field in its “long-quote” screen. ILX will also integrate other key functions of the Barra Risk Factor offering within several other areas of the ILX terminal product.