Sell-Side Technology Awards 2023: Best data provider to the sell side—FactSet

Overview

More than half of FactSet is dedicated to data integrity and concordance. The firm integrates and offers over 30 FactSet-owned datasets and more than 1,000 datasets from other third-party data providers. FactSet’s technology is designed to allow users to consume data in a variety of ways, including via datafeeds, a configurable mobile and desktop platform, digital portals, APIs, and the cloud. The firm’s data symbology links and aggregates a variety of content sources to ensure consistency, transparency and data integrity.

The solution

FactSet acquired BTU Analytics, a provider of data and analytics in the North American renewables, power, oil and natural gas sectors to expand its industry-specific/deep sector content offering. It also recently launched its Technology, Media and Telecoms (TMT) content offering, featuring content from companies like Insider Intelligence, Nash Information Services, Nielsen, and Variety Business Intelligence. The content spans television ratings, movie box offices, advertising spending and media asset ownership with additional data points to be added over the coming months.

Secret sauce

Examples of datasets sourced by FactSet include:

• Estimates: Thousands of global companies, segment data, guidance and actuals, commodities, and sector-specific estimates
• Fundamentals: Annual/interim/quarterly data, including financial statement data, per-share data, ratios, and business and geographic segment information
• Geographic revenue exposure: Structured and normalized display of companies’ revenues by geography
• Ownership: Institutional, mutual fund, insider/stakeholders, and float-related share ownership information
• Corporate activism and governance: Data items related to poison pills, significant activism reported in filings and news, and key takeover defenses from articles of incorporation and bylaws
• Supply chain shipping transactions: Normalized view of over 30 million shipments to detect supply chain risks and identify trends
• Global sanctions: Entities on economic sanctions lists to support enhanced due diligence, client onboarding, know-your-customer (KYC), and anti-money laundering (AML)
• StreetAccount: News and commentary in bulleted format that highlights key information
• Deep industry-specific fundamentals, estimates, and news metrics for sectors including banks, insurance, airlines, financials, hotels, metals/mining, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, and retail

Recent enhancements

FactSet launched a cloud-based tick history feed providing access to content spanning over 10 years of data with custom securities lists and on-demand retrievals. This allows users to streamline research, back-test strategies, and conduct transaction-cost analysis.

Dr. Dinah Koehler joined FactSet as director of ESG research. Koehler will lead FactSet’s ESG thought-leadership and research initiatives.

Future objectives

Current technology trends are leading to greater demand to deliver a fully digital and integrated client experience. FactSet has focused its innovations and investment in cloud computing, APIs, and its analytics platform to provide real-time, predictive business intelligence. It will continue to expand its financial content to support clients’ investment strategies, including enhanced data in private markets, industry-specific deep sector metrics, ESG intelligence, and real-time exchange data.

Why they won

Few firms, if any, can hold a candle to FactSet when it comes to the sourcing, collation and delivery of data. Not only does it offer its own unique datasets, but it’s also a reseller of over 1,000 datasets sourced from other data providers offering users just about every conceivable dataset they could possibly want. But there’s another aspect to the firm’s strategy that make it the go-to provider for large numbers of firms on both sides of the industry: It prides itself on the small army of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) sitting behind its data, providing users with points of contact and, increasingly, transparency into the datasets they oversee.