MARKET DATA PROFESSIONALS

strategic advisory

The financial services industry is facing unprecedented market challenges. Revenue and profit sources are shifting. The line between vendors & exchanges is increasingly blurred. Cost pressure is rising whereas business models are transforming. Customer behaviour is evolving. At the same time, regulators are putting the industry under ever-increasing scrutiny. Some institutions are maintaining or improving controls over their market data landscape, while others are failing to adapt. What does it take to win?

A clear strategy, an outstanding business- and operating model and disciplined execution!

End user firms place a high value on accurate market data to meet their needs – from seeking alpha for customers to achieving compliance for auditors. Many firms don’t realize how much redundancy and unnecessary costs they may be incurring in the field of market data services. Creating a “single view” of their market data- and related subscription services footprint is crucial in order to see the “big picture” regarding vendor services.

But today’s market data management teams are often stretched thin with increased regulation and under pressure because of the rising cost of market data and simply lack time to facilitate product innovation and at the same time keep overall market data spend flat or even bring it down – with fewer dedicated and qualified resources. These challenges leave little bandwidth to focus on more strategic issues and opportunities to truly add value to the business. This puts managers in a stressful, complex role that involves managing multiple contracts, negotiating deals and a long list of responsibilities that easily distracts from effectively managing market data expenditures. Surprisingly, even though market data is the lifeblood for all professionals in the Financial Services industry, many firms still lack a clear market data strategy.

Market Data Professionals is uniquely positioned to provide this ‘strategic view’ of the organization and address the challenges firms are facing. 

Defining a strategy is hard work. It takes time, resources and distracts from the urgency of running the day-to-day business. But there are many good reasons why you should invest in developing one:

1. Without a strategy, market data teams often “drift away” from their end users and lack business alignment; not seldomly becoming more of a nuisance than of added value and eventually they are even at risk of being ignored .

2. Today’s markets are increasingly challenging and any firm aiming to achieve and maintain a competitive business edge in this industry needs to have their market data landscape in order.
 


3. Cost pressure forces the improvement of operational efficiencies, implementation of automated processes, economies of scale, rightsizing and standardization.

4. In order to comply with a wide range of external regulations, a high level of data quality needs to be maintained; at the same time competition forces consumer firms to drive down costs and focus on usage transparency

This is where we can help!