Financial Market Data Management: The Challenges
High Costs
Financial institutions typically pay more than they need to for financial market data from vendors like Bloomberg. Cost challenges include:
- Subscription tiers do not match user feature consumption
- Spending on duplicate and unused subscriptions
- One size fit all software allocation
- Maintaining control of costs that continually rise
- Spending allocation for market data services based on portfolio size
Compliance Risks
There is often a lack of clarity over what to charge clients in relation to market data, as the cost base is not properly understood. This creates a range of risks and challenges:
- Risk of allocating costs to client portfolios incorrectly
- Commercial risks and damaged client relationships
- Legal and compliance risks from regulators for fee schedules based on trade origin jurisdiction
Management Challenges
Financial institutions often have minimal visibility of how market data subscriptions are being used. The main financial market data management problems include:
- Limited subscription utilization visibility, limiting opportunities for cost optimization
- Decentralized purchasing and subscription management that is difficult to control
- Subscription sprawl, duplication, and management fragmentation
- Understanding and optimising often complex contracts from market data vendors
The Solution
We specialize in helping financial institutions cut Bloomberg data license costs. We do this by analyzing real-time data to develop a comprehensive overview of the actual utilization of each subscription. We compile this information into a Financial Market Data Management Report that includes the subscriptions you need to retain, the subscriptions you can cancel, and the subscriptions you can replace with a lower cost alternative.
The savings are typically up to 20% of current Bloomberg market data subscription spend. Plus, our pricing model means you only pay when we save you money, reducing ROI risk to zero.
%
% Cost Savings Up To
%
Rate of Compliance
%
Cost Optimization Efficiency Saving
The Process
Data Capture
- Capture Bloomberg license data within your organization.
- Both real-time data and historical data from logs is captured.
Assessment
- Audit current subscription usage
- Assess cost allocation by client, portfolio, or strategy
- Identify unused, under-used, and duplicate subscriptions
- Analyze user needs versus subscription capabilities versus actual utilization
- Compliance gap assessment
Cost Optimization
- Identify subscriptions that can be cancelled
- Identify subscriptions that can changed to a lower cost option
- Identify subscriptions that can be replaced with an alternative, lower-cost Bloomberg terminal competitor
Report
- Comprehensive findings of current position
- Recommendations with explanations
- Estimated cost savings
- Next steps guide
Implementation Support
- Vendor transition
- Data integration
- Staff training and change management
The Results
Market data costs reduced by up to 20%
Savings realised annually
Data quality and integrity maintained
Usage based subscription cost allocations
Enhanced visibility and control
Compliance risks mitigated
Optimized financial market data management
Time to value immediately achieved
Savings in less than 30 days
Supported Market Data Vendors
Bloomberg Terminal
Refinitiv Eikon
FactSet
The Benefits
Save
Reduce market data subscription costs while maintaining data quality and ensuring users have access to the data they need.
Data-Driven
Allocate subscriptions based on actual usage, connect market data requests to specific portfolios, and improve oversight.
Compliance
Ensure portfolios only pay for the data that is consumed and create clear audit trails to enhance compliance.
FAQs
What are the deliverables I can expect from your financial market data management services?
Following the monitoring and analysis of market data subscription utilization in your organization, we will produce a Financial Market Data Management Report. The report will include our recommendations on the subscriptions you should keep and those where optimization changes can be made. We’ll provide advice on how to make the changes, as well as full support to ensure the savings and optimizations recommended in the report are maximized.
Will our teams lose access to critical market data?
No, as we have two objectives when delivering our market data subscription optimization service. The first is to reduce the cost of subscriptions. The second is to ensure that data quality is maintained. Any cost-reduction changes that we recommend won’t affect the abilities of your teams to access the data they need.
How quickly will I see savings on my market data subscriptions?
The monitoring and analysis process typically takes 1-2 months. You’ll then receive a report with data-driven recommendations. You will start to save on market data subscriptions as soon as you begin implementing the recommendations.
How much does your service cost?
We don’t know. That’s not a cop-out answer, either, as we operate using an innovative and risk-free Pay Per Saving (PPS) model. The PPS model works on a percentage of the savings you make through our financial market data management and optimization recommendations. In other words, you only pay us when we save you money.
What about the contracts we have with market data vendors?
Our team has extensive experience working with market data vendors and negotiating contracts. We’ll give you advice on how to optimize your spend, taking into account any long-term contracts that are in place.
How much disruption will there be to our day-to-day operations?
The disruption will be minimal as our technology is automated. We’ll work with your IT team to integrate the solution. From there, the process is largely automated as the technology monitors and analyzes market data subscription usage. Your teams continue to work as normal throughout the process.
Is our data secure?
We utilize the latest data privacy and security protocols, plus we have extensive experience integrating automation technologies in banks and enterprises in the financial sector. We can sign NDAs as required, and we’ll never share information with third parties without your permission.
What makes your market data subscription optimization service different?
There are three main areas where our service is unique and delivers better results than alternative options:
- We are vendor-neutral, unlike when market data vendors offer subscription utilization analysis. As we are not tied to any specific vendor, our objective remains focused on getting the right balance of subscriptions for your organization.
- Our tools are automated and data-driven, ensuring accuracy and comprehensive oversight.
- Our Pay Per Saving pricing model means there is no risk – you only pay whenever we deliver results.
Can you help with market data vendor selection, migration, and management?
Yes, we’ll support all aspects of market data vendor management, including recommending changing subscriptions to lower cost alternatives and helping with the migration process. We can also help you consolidate vendors, and we’ll provide advice on how to achieve optimized contractual terms.
How does your service improve compliance?
Our analysis will help you determine whether market data subscription utilization is aligned with the contractual terms you have with customers. This analysis will highlight risks that can then be resolved or mitigated.
Get in Touch
Take control of your Blomberg market data subscriptions and cut costs. Complete the form and we’ll get back to you to arrange a consultation.