Best Reference Data Provider: Thomson Reuters

The win comes as reference data progressively becomes
a key focus for Thomson Reuters. “The company’s investment in reference data has increased steadily in recent years and is now higher than it has ever been,” says Stuart Martin, managing director at risk information and learning services, Thomson Reuters. The vendor is building scalable systems in the back end to deliver more information to multiple platforms in a sophisticated and time-sensitive manner. “The appetite is for more data, better-quality data and more competitive prices,” Martin says. In response to this trend, Thomson Reuters is developing services that allow more content to be moved around the organization, maximizing data connectivity and access in client applications and services.  

The vendor has also made product enhancements in the past year by focusing on fixed income and reference data to meet regulatory requirements. Martin says Thomson Reuters has spent a lot of time enhancing source databases, securing new and extendable data provisions and developing enhanced referential information to complement the core data records. The company’s recent acquisition of the Avox Legal Entity service also demonstrates its ambition to create a complete solution for enhanced pricing, reference, issuer, entity and regulatory data, and analytics. 

Martin says there is a shift in focus from financial instrument data to regulatory reference data, as the trend of regulation hitting firms left, right and center continues. This shift is the background for the upcoming changes to DataScope Equities Plus—released in 2015 as an enhanced bulk feed with broader equities coverage and a faster delivery cycle.

As the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II) looms, the DataScope Equities Plus reference data feed will be further expanded and renamed DataScope Plus. “MiFID II is moving the boundaries on data consumption,” says Martin, and to help clients meet MiFID II requirements, DataScope Equities Plus is being built out to become a global, multi-asset-class pricing and reference data feed.