Buy-Side Technology Awards 2015: Best Buy-Side Data Management Product—Markit EDM

And here we are, some six months later, in the wake of yet another Markit win in the data management category of the Buy-Side Technology Awards—that’s nine wins in as many years for Markit—with that challenge nowhere nearer to being satisfactorily addressed. Markit, along with Liquidnet, BI-SAM and RIMES Technologies, have dominated their chosen categories with such completeness that if these awards were football matches, they’d have been called off at half time to save the blushes of everyone involved.

The London-based firm claims to be the data management technology provider with the largest number of clients, a position it continues to enhance year-on-year by signing new clients to its EDM platform, acquired from Cadis in May 2012. It signed 28 new clients since the start of this year alone, 26 of which are already live, with a number of new signings still imminent before the end of this year, taking its total client numbers past the 150 mark. Markit reports that two of this year’s new clients are on the hosted version of Markit EDM, while a further three have inked similar deals, following in the footsteps of UBS, which became the hosted version’s first client back in November 2013. The firm also signed its first Japanese client this year, bringing to 13 the number of user-firms it has in the Asia-Pacific region. 

Clearly, the acquisition hasn’t hurt the product—if anything Markit EDM has never been in a better place, with a long sales pipeline and a global sales and support network. According to Markit, EDM projects are increasing in scope and complexity as the platform’s use-cases expand, which now typically include a number of regulatory projects including BCBS 239, EMIR trade reporting, Solvency II and Mifid II transaction reporting.

As one would expect, Markit has been tinkering away under the hood during the course of the last 12 months, ensuring that Markit EDM has all the necessary bells and whistles to remain at the head of what has become a congested data management pack, although its investment in its support and documentation systems, including video tutorials on system features, will be of particular interest to new and existing clients. 

It signed 28 new clients since the start of this year alone, 26 of which are already live, with a number of new signings still imminent before the end of this year, taking its total client numbers past the 150 mark.