What we do · Speedway Assessment™
The Speedway Assessment™.
Every area evaluated, ranked by priority.
A fixed-fee, fixed-scope diagnostic of the market data function. It evaluates each area, from vendor exposure and licensing posture through entitlements, compliance, and operating model, and ranks them by priority, so the firm knows what to address first and what can wait. Delivered on a fixed timetable, with board- and audit-committee-ready output. Index and benchmark data is assessed separately.
Why now
Three structural pressures reshaping the economics of market data.
Most firms are exposed on more than one.
- $50B
Global spend on financial market data, and rising. The latest in a run of mid-single-digit annual growth.
Industry consulting estimates (2026)
- Top 4
Market data is consistently a Top 4 expense category at most investment managers, behind Real Estate, People, and IT, yet typically the most opaque of the four.
Industry benchmarking
- 80%
Of buy-side firms expect market data budgets to keep rising over the next twelve months.
Industry survey
What this looks like
Inside most firms.
- Spend is growing faster than AUM, headcount, or transaction volumes, and faster than inflation.
- Cross-functional ownership is distributed across procurement, IT, finance, market data, and the desks. No one owns it firm-wide.
- Vendor leverage favors the suppliers; visibility into usage, entitlements, and renewals is often partial.
Why the moment matters
Three observable trends are converging on financial services firms.
- I.
Vendor licensing exposure
Industry coverage documents retrospective liabilities exceeding US$2.5M per market data license audit, with three-year retrospective windows standard. Recent reclassifications of end-of-day data have triggered back-billing across firms using the largest vendor data licenses. AI inference and machine-consumer applications are now a discovery target on their own: distributing licensed data to a model, an agent, or a downstream system is a use case most existing licenses did not anticipate, and vendors are actively enforcing against it.
- II.
Active cost reduction across financial services
Industry CFO surveys show a majority implementing cost reductions excluding layoffs; nearly half cite increasing technology use to reduce costs as a top funding priority. Boards are asking for visibility into vendor and third-party costs.
- III.
Regulatory enforcement now active
DORA's informal tolerance period has ended; national competent authorities are conducting active enforcement reviews. The MiFIR Review and ESMA's RTS on Reasonable Commercial Basis raise documentation standards for both consumers and providers of market data.
What “good” looks like
Five reinforcing dimensions.
Most firms are strong on one or two; few are strong on all five. The Speedway Assessment™ measures the firm against each.
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Control
Single source of truth for vendors, contracts, and entitlements. Calendared renewals. Defined ownership across procurement, IT, finance, market data, and the desks.
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Cost savings + cost avoidance
Hard savings on current spend: inventory-based subscription rationalization, license rightsizing, vendor consolidation. Forward avoidance: negotiated escalation caps, audit back-fees prevented, regulatory exposure addressed.
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Compliance
Documented entitlement controls, vendor audit response procedures stood up, alignment with DORA and the MiFIR Review, exchange entitlement reporting. A defensible audit trail.
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Operational efficiency
Automated user provisioning, reconciled invoices, streamlined entitlement workflows. Processes that scale rather than break under volume.
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Transparency
Cross-functional visibility into spend, usage, and risk. Board- and audit-committee-ready reporting. A shared language across procurement, finance, and the desks.
The Speedway approach
Four phases. In order.
Four to ten weeks of calendar time, with ten to fifteen hours of stakeholder time required from the client. Vendor-agnostic throughout.
- Phase 0
Foundation
Establish the inputs: contract inventory, organization charts, vendor map, and existing policies. The starting picture, written down.
- Phase 1
Discovery
Stakeholder interviews, workflow documentation, and architecture review. How the firm actually consumes and pays for market data today.
- Phase 2
Analysis
Maturity scoring, benchmarking, gap analysis, and heat-mapped risk. Each finding tied to a specific dollar figure where the data allows.
- Phase 3
Roadmap
Findings, quick wins, a business case, and a prioritized set of recommendations sized for the firm. Owner, timing, and expected return for each step.
Four focus areas, every engagement
What the assessment covers.
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Cost savings + cost avoidance
Rationalization, consolidation, and license rightsizing on current spend; negotiated avoidance of future vendor escalation, audit back-fees, and regulatory exposure.
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Licensing & contracts
Contract inventory normalized to a single schema; usage rights reviewed line by line; audit exposure assessed before a vendor auditor finds it.
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Compliance & risk
Entitlement management, vendor compliance, and alignment with DORA, the MiFIR Review and the RTS on Reasonable Commercial Basis.
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Operational efficiency
Process automation, workflow optimization, and operating-model recommendations the firm can stand up itself or with our support.
What you receive
A board- and audit-committee-ready set of deliverables.
Quantified, defensible, ready to act on. The firm keeps everything.
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Executive summary
Findings, opportunity, and roadmap. Written for management and audit-committee use.
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Risk heat map
Quantified exposure across eight-plus risk areas, scored red, amber, and green.
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Maturity scorecard
A structured maturity assessment across the market-data functional areas, with current state and a twelve-month target for each.
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Vendor & contract inventory
Normalized spend, contract terms and a calendared renewal schedule.
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Savings + avoidance roadmap
A three-phase prioritized plan: quick wins, near-term moves, medium-term initiatives.
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High-level business case
ROI projections, success metrics, resource and timeline implications, sized to the firm.
Tailored value by stakeholder
What each stakeholder gets from the engagement.
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COO / Chief Data Officer
Operating model & governance
Maturity scoring across functional areas; cross-functional governance gaps surfaced; steering-committee and RACI recommendations; modernization observations without a tech-vendor agenda.
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CFO / Head of Finance
Cost savings, cost avoidance, audit defense
Recoverable spend identified; vendor escalation neutralized; audit and regulatory exposure dollarized. Cost-allocation transparency for chargebacks; board-ready narrative; auditable benchmarking trail.
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Head of Market Data / Operations
External benchmark & function uplift
External validation of cost discipline already advocated for internally; a quantified business case for tools, headcount, and governance; vendor negotiation ammunition; audit defense playbook.
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Head of Procurement
Vendor leverage & renewal calendar
Complete normalized vendor inventory; forward renewal calendar; tail consolidation candidates; enterprise license migration analysis; standardized contract clauses on usage, audit, and redistribution.
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CRO / Head of Compliance
Audit risk & regulatory adjacency
Licensing exposure surfaced and sized before an auditor does it; entitlement and usage discrepancies mapped to the contracts they breach; a documented control posture the risk owner can put in front of the board.
Questions we get asked
Six questions, answered before the scoping call.
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What does the Speedway Assessment™ cover?
Four focus areas on every engagement: cost savings and cost avoidance, licensing and contracts, compliance and risk, and operational efficiency. The firm is measured against five reinforcing dimensions — control, cost savings and avoidance, compliance, operational efficiency, and transparency — and each area is ranked by priority so the firm knows what to address first and what can wait.
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How long does it take, and how much of our time does it need?
Four to ten weeks of calendar time, with ten to fifteen hours of stakeholder time required from the client. The work runs in four phases in order: foundation (contract inventory, org charts, vendor map, existing policies), discovery (stakeholder interviews, workflow documentation, architecture review), analysis (maturity scoring, benchmarking, gap analysis, heat-mapped risk), and roadmap (findings, quick wins, a business case, and prioritized recommendations).
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How is it priced?
Fixed fee and fixed scope, agreed before the work starts. The 30-minute scoping call is free; the assessment itself proceeds if the fit is right on both sides.
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What do we receive at the end?
Six deliverables, board- and audit-committee-ready: an executive summary, a risk heat map scoring exposure across eight-plus risk areas, a maturity scorecard with a twelve-month target for each functional area, a normalized vendor and contract inventory with a calendared renewal schedule, a three-phase savings and avoidance roadmap, and a high-level business case with ROI projections and success metrics. The firm keeps everything.
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Why is index and benchmark data assessed separately?
Index and benchmark licensing is its own discipline with its own fee models and its own reconciliation to funds and products. Folding it into this engagement would stop the Speedway Assessment™ being a short, fixed-scope diagnostic. It is covered by the index and benchmark licensing practice instead.
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How do we start?
Two steps. A 30-minute scoping call, where Paraxis brings the framework and the questions and the firm brings context on priorities, current visibility into spend and exposure, and where the assessment would add the most value; the firm leaves that call with a right-sized scope. Then the fixed-fee, fixed-scope assessment itself.