The practice
Investment data as
a governed discipline.
Market data, benchmark data, reference data. Ten service areas across the three, run as one integrated practice. Each engagement is built around a specific commercial or regulatory pressure the buyer is facing today.
Ten services, four groups
Find the one that matches what’s happening right now.
Start with the integrated assessment if you want the whole function reviewed at once, or jump straight to the service that matches the pressure you’re under.
The integrated practice
Market data optimization The whole market data function assessed together — cost, licensing, compliance, governance, and fit for purpose.Or start with a specific pressure:
Cost & contracts
- Market data cost optimization Licenses sized to actual consumption, vendors chosen on total cost, redundant feeds eliminated.
- Vendor contract negotiation You lead the negotiation; we arm you with your entitlement-level consumption before you walk in.
- Index and benchmark licensing Benchmark inventory reconciled against the funds, sleeves, and products that actually use it.
Audit & compliance
- Exchange and vendor audit defense Defend the client position in exchange and vendor audits with entitlement evidence and contract language.
- License entitlement management A full vendor inventory with entitlements mapped to usage, discrepancies surfaced before an auditor finds them.
- Remediation services Compliance issues addressed quickly, with proven remediation strategies and vendor relationships.
Data & governance
- Reference data management Security master, pricing master, corporate actions — the data every position and valuation resolves against.
- Operating-model design Who does the work, in what sequence, with which decision rights — designed, documented, stood up.
- Governance framework development The policies, control library, and documentation cadence that keep decisions defensible under audit.
Full buyer alignment
Financial data advisory is our entire business. There's no adjacent management consulting practice and no software sold on the back of the advice. Most of our clients are the institutions that license and consume data.
- 10 Service areas, one discipline
- 100+ Years of combined market data leadership
- 40+ Exchange and vendor audits defended
Market data optimization
The whole market data function, not just the invoice. Cost is one of five areas, alongside licensing, compliance, governance, and fit for purpose. Spend is an output of decisions taken years earlier; changing the number durably means changing those decisions.
- Licenses sized to measured consumption, not to provisioning
- Display, non-display, redistribution and derived rights mapped per agreement
- Entitlements reconciled to real usage and discrepancies closed
- Policy, control library, decision rights and renewal calendar documented
- Products matched to the use case they actually serve
- Over- and under-specification surfaced, including shadow purchases
Market data cost optimization
The core discipline. Licenses sized to actual consumption. Vendors selected by total cost of ownership, not list price. Redundant feeds eliminated. Contracts negotiated against benchmarked rates rather than vendor-quoted rates. For the CFO and Head of Market Data holding the annual budget line.
- License optimization and vendor negotiation
- Usage analysis and demand shaping
- Distribution engineering across departments
- Commercial leverage strategies
- Contract review and rate benchmarking
- Entitlement management optimization
Vendor contract negotiation
You lead the negotiation. We make sure you walk in knowing what your firm consumes today at the entitlement level, what it will need over the term, and where the two don't match. Renewals, net-new agreements, consolidations, and displacements across Bloomberg, LSEG (Refinitiv), FactSet, S&P, MSCI, and the major exchanges, with commercial terms, entitlements, and audit posture kept in one conversation, not three.
- Renewal target setting with specific commercial positions
- Multi-vendor competitive tension where the contract permits
- Direct negotiation with vendor sales and licensing teams
- Total cost of ownership modeling, not list-price comparison
- Audit, redistribution, and assignment clauses read together
- AI and machine-consumer use rights read into the license, not left ambiguous
- Settlement of legacy disputes folded into the renewal
Exchange and vendor audit defense
Audits come from two directions: exchanges enforcing market data policies (NYSE, Nasdaq, Cboe, CME, ICE) and vendors enforcing license terms (Bloomberg, LSEG, S&P, MSCI, FactSet). Several names sit in both columns. ICE and LSEG run exchanges and sell data, and they audit on both fronts. We defend the client position with entitlement evidence, usage data, and contract language. For the Head of Market Data or Head of Compliance holding an unopened audit letter.
- Pre-audit readiness assessments
- Vendor audit response management
- Policy and procedure development
- Ongoing compliance monitoring
- Risk identification and mitigation
- AI use-case exposure (inference, agent tools, machine-consumer distribution) surfaced ahead of vendor discovery
- Audit defense strategies and counter-claim analysis
License entitlement management
A vendor inventory the client can see in full. Entitlements mapped to actual user behavior. Discrepancies surfaced before a vendor auditor finds them. The audit defense file maintained current as a standing artifact, not a fire drill.
- Complete entitlement inventory at user, terminal and API level
- Usage mapping to surface unused or under-utilized licenses
- Discrepancy detection ahead of vendor audits
- Reconciliation between contract terms and operating reality
- Permissioning system review and remediation
- Entitlement mapping extended to AI systems and machine-consumer applications
- Standing audit defense file maintained on an ongoing basis
Index and benchmark licensing
Benchmark inventory reconciled against the funds, sleeves, and products that actually use it. Index providers (S&P, MSCI, FTSE Russell, Bloomberg, ICE) charge on usage. We make sure the licensed footprint matches the consumed footprint, and unused families are retired at the next renewal. For the CIO, CFO, or Head of Product carrying a benchmark line that grows every year without a discipline to check it.
- Complete benchmark inventory across index families and providers
- Usage verification against funds, sleeves, and product wrappers
- Rationalization: unused benchmarks retired ahead of renewal
- Licensing compliance across creation, distribution, derived-index, and machine-consumer uses
- Fee model normalization across AUM tiers, product counts, and ETF flags
- Audit posture for index-owner licensing reviews
Reference data management
Security master, pricing master, corporate actions. The data every position, valuation, and client report resolves against. We rationalize where it is sourced, write the arbitration rules the firm has never actually documented, evidence what the licenses permit downstream, and hand back a function with a named owner per domain. Platform-neutral.
- Source and domain inventory across security, pricing, and corporate actions
- Golden-source arbitration and survivorship rules, written down
- Data quality rules, tolerances, and exception queues with owners
- Corporate-action handling across announcement, confirmation, and settlement
- Lineage from source contract through to end consumer
- Redistribution, derived-use, and machine-consumer rights evidenced
Operating-model design
The people-and-process layer. Who does the work, in what sequence, with which decision rights, on which system. Roles, responsibilities, escalation paths, and the systems of record that back each decision. The org and its plumbing. Designed once, documented, stood up.
- Function mapping across procurement, ops, compliance, and risk
- Role and responsibility definition with named accountability
- Escalation paths and decision rights documented
- Process improvement and tool selection
- Stakeholder communication and change management
Governance framework development
The rules-and-controls layer that sits above the operating model. Policies, control library, committee charters, standing agendas, and the documentation cadence that keeps every market-data decision defensible under audit and internal review. The rulebook the operating model executes against. The artifact that outlives the org chart.
- Market data committee charter and standing agenda
- Control library mapped to regulatory and vendor obligations
- Documentation and reporting cadence
- Long-term prevention strategies for spend creep
- Ongoing compliance monitoring and reporting
- Procurement calendar and renewal sequencing
Remediation services
Address compliance issues quickly and effectively with proven remediation strategies and vendor relationships. The faster a problem is recognized, the cheaper it settles.
- Rapid issue identification and assessment
- Vendor negotiation and settlement
- Process improvement implementation
- Long-term prevention strategies
- Documentation and reporting
- Stakeholder communication management