Waters Rankings 2015: Best Reference Data Provider ─ Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters serves as an originator, consolidator and redistributor of security and financial instrument data. DataScope for Corporate Actions provides full terms and conditions data, including ratings and descriptive content, for each asset type. It also maintains extensive market-level and issue-level industry standard numbering codes associated with each equity instrument.

Over the past year, the firm made a number of headlines with its DataScope offering. In July it added StarMine credit default models to the DataScope suite of non-real-time data workstations, combining pricing and analytics, ratings and reference data on one platform to help firms better manage their credit risk exposure by more accurately predicting credit events. It also released a new pricing transparency capability for structured notes and hard-to-value over-the-counter derivatives with the launch of Thomson Reuters Pricing Service Plus (TRPS Plus), available to DataScope Select users.

The solution also provides risk metrics such as value-at-risk, credit valuation adjustment and the Greeks in order to provide transparency into the calculation methodologies of pricing these hard-to-value instruments, which trade on opaque and often illiquid markets.

In April, Thomson Reuters added AskTRPS to its pricing service and its DataScope platform in an effort to provide more transparency on evaluated pricing challenges and making the challenge process easier.

"Before, they had to type in the CUSIP and bond information," said Robert Vincini, head of pricing service specialists at Thomson Reuters, in an interview with Waters' sibling publication Inside Reference Data. "That information is now already there, so it's less work for the customer. It's hopefully making it easier for them in the process."

To address regulatory concerns around Solvency II, Thomson Reuters launched a dedicated data service on its DataScope Select offering. The solution provides data needed to comply with disclosure and capital adequacy rules according to Solvency II regulations. With the scale and scope of its DataScope suite, only a fool would bet against Thomson Reuters forcing its way in the winners' circle in 12 months' time.