The practice
Market data as
a governed discipline.
For the firm where market data has become the second-largest technology line, and the least disciplined. Eight service areas, one integrated practice. Each engagement is built around a specific commercial or regulatory pressure the buyer is facing today.
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.
- 8 Service areas, one discipline
- 100+ Years of combined market data leadership
- 40+ Major vendor and exchange mandates delivered
The eight service areas
Let’s start with the one that’s most urgent right now.
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
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