Most innovative market data project/initiative—firmfact

Initiative overview—firmfact

Firmfact—recently renamed and rebranded from marketdata.ai—runs the market data function for banks, asset managers and hedge funds, including contracts, costs, licenses, entitlements and inventory. The platform’s artificial intelligence technology reads documents, matches invoices line by line and verifies entitlements with almost no keying necessary, allowing staff to move from administrative tasks to strategic imperatives—negotiation, cost control and advising the business on the data it owns.

The premise

Market data teams hold the largest and most complex external contracts within banks and buy-side firms, yet the tools built for them to carry out their function treat the work as simply filing. Prior to the current AI generation, inventory systems could digitize records, but staff still had to read, match and reconcile discrepancies by hand. Firmfact redesigned this process from scratch with a modern data model and back end designed for automation, rather than new features bolted on to an old schema.

Measurables

The firmfact platform is currently live and in use across the financial services industry. The system automatically processes contracts, invoices, and emails through a central inbox. Nine out of 10 documents uploaded to the system need only a short review and no changes. Per-line invoice variance checks are also live and in production. Customers sign up on the website and get started themselves, and the platform runs on European hosting, passes the Digital Operational Resilience Act (Dora) checks, and ships in seven languages.

Future objectives

Firmfact plans to open the product to all personnel that market data functions touch. Business users will get the full life cycle in one place—work that is still handled manually across large parts of the industry—with AI closing the gaps between steps and putting the right information in front of the right people without being asked. Vendors will get a similar route in for their own details and invoices.

Why firmfact won

Given how much buy-side and sell-side firms commit to spending on data each year, it is surprising that large numbers of them still have no effective means of cataloguing the data they consume and managing the contracts governing it. Firmfact, known as marketdata.ai until recently, wins its first-ever category in these and other WatersTechnology awards, thanks to its firmfact offering designed to help its clients manage a key aspect of the market data function that has long been treated as an administrative exercise. Banks, asset managers and hedge funds manage some of their most complex external contracts, yet much of the work involved around tracking licenses, entitlements, invoices and inventory continues to rely on manual reading, matching and reconciliation. The firmfact platform is designed to automate those processes as opposed to simply digitizing them.

The firm’s AI technology reads contracts, invoices and emails, matches invoices line by line and verifies entitlements with minimal keying, allowing market data teams to spend more time on contract negotiation and management, cost controls and advising the business. The underlying architecture is important: a data model designed specifically around market data licensing, bi-temporal history and automation provides the foundation for AI to extract, reconcile and flag discrepancies, while preserving the ability to reconstruct information as it stood at any point in time.

The platform is already live and in production, with nine out of 10 uploaded documents requiring only a short review and minimal, if any, changes, while per-line invoice variance checks are also in production. Self-service onboarding, European hosting, Dora compliance and support for seven languages further demonstrate the product’s versatility. With plans to extend the platform across the wider market data ecosystem, firmfact offers a compelling example of how AI can, and should, be applied to transform stubborn, operational problems.