Best Managed Service for Reference Data: Rimes Technologies

The vendor that has claimed the award in the Best Managed Service for Reference Data category this year has a long background in managed services, but it may be news to some that it has been managing reference data since starting out around 20 years ago. The winner, Rimes Technologies, which was originally known as a benchmark data specialist, supplies all data to clients through managed data services, such as its Rimes Reference Data Service.

Alessandro Ferrari, executive vice president of global marketing, Rimes Technologies, says Rimes has, over the years, become known for its benchmark data. This is the data clients have been struggling the most with, but reference data has always been part of Rimes since the very beginning. “Although we are known as a benchmark data specialist, we have noticed an increase in demand from clients for ‘non-traditional’ reference data, such as alternative investment data and private equity data,” he says.

Rimes now serves more than 280 clients in 40 countries across the globe, including 60 of the global top 100 asset managers by assets under management, and eight of the 10 largest custodians in the world. The reason the vendor has achieved this significant footprint, explains Ferrari, could be linked to its approach to managed services. “Our clients appreciate the difference between traditional data aggregation—often misleadingly marketed as a ‘managed service’­—and the truly fully managed service that Rimes provides, which takes care of all aspects of data management, including sourcing, remediation, enrichment, scripting—to fit any system—and governance,” says Ferrari.