BST Awards 2018: Best Data Provider to the Buy Side—RIMES Technologies

It’s difficult to know what to write about RIMES Technologies that hasn’t already appeared in the pages of this magazine over the years. After all, Waters has published 12 write-ups on the New York-headquartered data provider in this category since the inaugural Buy-Side Technology Awards were held at the Lanesborough in Kinghtsbridge in 2007. Along with BISAM and Cadis, RIMES was one of the unheralded winners that day, but has since established such a stranglehold on this category that its name is now synonymous with the provision of customized datasets and services to the buy side. 

Over the years, RIMES—which has grown its client roster to more than 350 firms, including 60 of the industry’s 100 largest asset managers in assets under management—has fended off challenges from the likes of Bloomberg, Refinitiv (formerly Thomson Financial & Risk), QuantHouse and FactSet for bragging rights in this category, but its record remains blemish-free. The RIMES service currently comprises 260 data partners, representing in excess of 1,100 data sources, customizing and delivering data to 40-plus end-systems within a variety of capital makers firms, including portfolio management, performance attribution, risk management, reporting and compliance, as well as in-house databases and enterprise data management systems.

So what is it that makes RIMES different from other providers? “Our clients tell us that it is our passion for data—one client refers to it as an obsession—which is at the heart of our business model,” explains Alessandro Ferrari, chief marketing officer at RIMES technologies in New York. “Data management is our bread and butter so we have to get it right all the time. That ‘obsession’ with data is crucial to the relationship we have with our clients because these days when we meet a prospect, we are often competing with an in-house solution and not third parties, and so it takes a lot of trust from the client to let an external partner take care of all their data,” he says. 

According to Ferrari, what also sets the firm apart from other providers is that at RIMES the implementation team is present right from the pre-sales stage. There are times when pre-sales teams may promise functionality and implementation timeframes that are unrealistic, which the implementation team will not be able to deliver on. “That scenario often leads to broken promises,” he says. “Our implementation and pre-sales teams work together from the outset, so when they go in to a pitch meeting, the client gets told straightaway what they can and cannot deliver, but more importantly, once they sign an agreement, they have a commitment [from the RIMES team] to deliver.”