Buy-Side Technology Awards 2015: Best Big Data Technology Provider to the Buy Side—S3 Partners

Blacklight, S3 Partners’ flagship offering, was rolled out in 2013. It is designed to allow users to manage and reduce counterparty risk; map prime brokerage, derivatives and custody data into one electronic protocol; create revenue-generating solutions; and access, analyze and act on validated trade data and contractual agreements. S3 Partners currently supports capital markets firms of all description that cumulatively manage approximately $1.4 trillion on behalf of asset owners. 

The hosted Blacklight solution allows users to reduce the amount of time necessary to manage prime, swap and custodial data by three to seven hours, per day, according to S3 Partners. It also allows buy-side firms to improve their relationships with their sell-side partners by increasing productivity, finding cost efficiencies, and controlling information. 

S3’s securities master database includes 450,000 discreet identifiers, mapped to all financing/swap counterparties. The company also provides Basel III support for new analysis requirements, while its Margin Recon tool provides reporting, analytics and validation. On the reporting front, Blacklight provides standardized reporting in addition to fully customizable reporting capabilities. Recent rollouts include a return-on-assets data service, a security finance dashboard, enhanced visualization tools, a long-only toolkit, multi-asset class exposure analytics, and weekly research and market color features.

At this year’s Waters Rankings awards, where the categories are decided exclusively by end-users’ votes, Blacklight took home the 2015 best data analytics gong. With a focus on such an important topic, there’s no doubt that there will be room for more growth for this burgeoning product. 

The hosted Blacklight solution allows users to reduce the amount of time necessary to manage prime, swap and custodial data by three to seven hours per day. It also allows buy-side firms to improve their relationships with their sell-side partners by increasing productivity, finding cost efficiencies, and controlling information.