Best Market Data Provider (Broker): TP Icap

 In the past seven years, Tullett Prebon Information (TPI) has been unbeatable in the Best Market Data Provider (Broker) category. Following Tullett Prebon’s acquisition of Icap, the two brands combined to form TP Icap and have continued this winning streak together, landing the award for an eighth consecutive year.

Many would have perceived 2017 as a challenging year to merge two data brands, but, amid inevitable focus on the revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (Mifid II), the new TP Icap Data & Analytics division was created at the start of the year. Chris Dearie, COO of the TP Icap Data & Analytics division, says the organization’s integration effort was focused on realizing benefits by creating more robust client services and data quality processes, which resulted in the combination of Icap’s Manila‑based support team with TPI’s support teams located across three regions. “We’ve brought together the best of both brands and beefed up the scale and capability,” he says.

To prepare for Mifid II, the TP Icap Data & Analytics division ensured the broking giant’s 11 different Mifid II-registered venues met the transparency obligations of the new regulation and could deliver pre‑ and post‑trade data to customers in both real‑time and delayed feeds. In addition, Mifid II preparations included the launch of a trade and order recap service. “We can provide our customers with a summary of all of their trades and orders, and deliver some of the fields they need to report to regulators,” says Dearie, explaining that the plan is for this service to be built out on a global basis.

TP Icap went beyond what was required to meet the Mifid II deadline, and last year also saw its data business introduce a range of new content sets. From the TPI side, there was a new suite of liquid natural gas content released last year, as well as data on government bond Separate Trading of Registered Interest and Principal of Securities (Strips) for EUR and GBP. “We had demand from a specific customer, and we worked with them to bring the government bond Strips content to market,” he says.

On the Icap side, new product sets were brought to market in April after an initial review of all the content. For the first time, the broker aggregated data by region, Dearie explains, and the first releases have included Pacific and Scandinavian packages, with content such as rates and money-market information for the respective regions. “We’ve been going at it at 100 miles an hour by trying to bring together two separate brands, leverage the best of both, manage Mifid II preparations and bring out new data,” says Dearie.

Read more about the IMD/IRD Awards 2018 winners