IMD & IRD Awards 2023: Best market data provider (broker)—BGC Partners (Fenics Market Data)

Overview

Fenics Market Data (FMD) is the exclusive information redistributor for brokerage and financial technology firm BGC Partners and associated companies. FMD grew at a record pace during 2022: It announced 48 new contracts in the last quarter and reported a 29% increase in contract sales over the course of the year. It has also increased headcount to support further expansion.

The solution

BGC Group operates multiple regulated trading venues and hundreds of over-the-counter (OTC) trading desks globally. FMD is sourced from over 20 of these group entities including BGC, GFI, RP Martin, Sunrise Brokers, Aurel, and Amerex. It is used by clients to provide visibility and transparency into the trading activities behind hard-to-price financial instruments.

Secret sauce

FMD continues to release new products and solutions to address client pain points. Its Fenics Labs division has delivered new AI and machine learning data and analytics products, which have assisted clients with price discovery in hard-to-price markets and complemented traditional, indicative datasets. In 2022, FMD launched RateSight, which provides clients with a single specialist service for treasuries and rates. It has also continued to expand its Level 2 Insights (L2i) data-as-a-solution (DaaS) product. In 2022, it initiated plans to normalize, centralize, and aggregate all order and trade flows across BGCP’s more than 400 liquidity pools, creating multi-asset class and instrument-specific consolidated pools of trading data.

Recent enhancements

• Substantially increased the asset class coverage of L2i to incorporate bonds, repos, credit derivatives, interest rate swaps, inflation swaps, interest rate options, FX spot, forwards and FX options, equity derivatives, and a range of commodities
• Doubled the headcount of the commercial, product and senior management teams, including establishing a Latin American division based in São Paulo
• Added specific market expertise and language skills across a number of emerging markets

Future objectives

• Expanding the instrument and asset class coverage of L2i across the entire suite of brokered instruments, which will result in the capture of every trade signal throughout the BGC Group
• Enlarging the distribution network to ensure presence of delivery is in line with client needs, including enhancement to direct feeds, focus on vendor relationships, and development of new channels such as cloud-based services

Why they won

Fenics Market Data, part of the BGC Partners Group, follow up its win in this category in last year’s IMD & IRD Awards by winning it again, thanks largely to its AI and machine learning data and analytics products designed to help clients extrapolate fair value prices for hard-to-price instruments. Instrument coverage is critical in this respect and it’s an area that FMD has particularly focused on during the course of the last 12 months―its cloud-based Level 2 Insights service now supports corporate bonds, repos, credit derivatives, interest rate swaps, inflation swaps, interest rate options, FX spot, forwards and FX options, equity derivatives, and a range of commodities.