At a glance
- 40%
Audit increase
Audit activity surge in 2025 across data owners, exchanges and vendors.
- 5+ yrs
Lookback period
Record-retention expectations in major exchange audit programs.
- 1.5%/mo
Interest rate
Monthly interest on under-reporting adjustments under common addenda.
Audits are no longer an occasional distraction.
Market data audits — including reference data and indexes — are becoming a standing operating condition. In 2025, market data vendor, stock exchange and index audit activity jumped an estimated 40%. That surge was not random. It reflects a structural shift in how exchanges, index providers and vendors protect revenue, enforce licensing and adapt to modern distribution models — cloud, APIs, managed services, internal platforms, non-display use, and new original works including derived workflows.
At a high level, a market data audit is an end-to-end test of whether a firm’s actual consumption and distribution of market data matches what it contracted and paid for — down to the user and device count, server-to-server flows, and whether data lands anywhere outside licensed scope.
This paper lays out the audit trends we expect to dominate 2026, why they are accelerating, and a pragmatic preparation playbook that reduces audit duration, limits liability, and prevents repeat findings.
What the paper covers
- Why vendor and exchange audits have shifted from occasional distraction to a standing operating condition.
- How modern distribution (cloud, APIs, managed services, non-display use) is reshaping audit triggers.
- The combination of broader scope, remote-first audits, and 5+ year lookback periods.
- A pragmatic preparation playbook that reduces audit duration, limits liability, and prevents repeat findings.
- What audit-ready operations look like — and the steps to get there before the next letter arrives.