Witad Awards 2020: Market Data Professional of the Year—Amanda Duggan, LSE Group

When it comes to market data, the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) is best known for producing—and amassing sizeable revenues for—massive volumes of price data to market participants. Perhaps less known is that as its indexes and analytics business lines have grown, the exchange group has found itself becoming a larger consumer of third-party data to support these products, and now captures data from almost 200 suppliers.

So it makes sense that the exchange would also adopt enterprise-wide data management processes more commonly seen at financial firms that consume exchange data. And the person who has led that charge over the past 18 months is LSEG’s senior manager of data sourcing and vendor management, Amanda Duggan.

“There has been a push from our side to understand the quality [of data from third parties], and to do our own quality assurance testing to understand that the data is accurate and is being delivered in a timely manner. And we’ve been able to put in place a lot of best practices to further improve that data integrity and data quality,” Duggan says.

These practices start with service-level agreements and vendor scorecards—widely adopted by financial firms for assessing suppliers—which allow the exchange to compare vendor services, ensure suppliers are meeting performance criteria, and to use that data when evaluating providers and negotiating services.

“It’s about being transparent around our usage, and having a more integrated, enterprise-wide data strategy … that ensures data can be used enterprise-wide, not just in siloed divisions,” she says.

Duggan has also implemented a three-tier system of classifying vendors—Silver, Gold, and Platinum—based on the level of information they provide about their services and how well they communicate with the exchange about any service issues.

These measures aren’t just about managing the cost and reliability of third-party data; when onboarding a new supplier, or refreshing an existing contract, LSEG also assesses factors such as a vendor’s information security practices, its code of conduct, whether it is subject to any sanctions, and performs a financial healthcheck on each supplier, to ensure they comply with LSEG’s procurement and risk practices.

Duggan’s team—spread across London, New York, Fort Mill in South Carolina, and Malaysia—also set up a Data Sourcing Committee that approves all new data before a contract is signed.

This year Duggan plans to create a strategic framework to ensure some of its third-party datafeeds are fit for purpose and align with the exchange’s strategy, pursue more enterprise data licenses, and ensure that all suppliers deemed “core” attain the Platinum service tier.

—MB