Market Data Consultants
Market Data Consultants
Located in Singapore, our consultancy stands at the forefront of serving Asia Pacific clients with tailor-made solutions. We specialize in partnering with financial institutions to navigate the complex landscape of market and reference data, providing insight and expertise to deliver solutions that encompass both the commercial acumen and technical expertise necessary for success in this field.
Additionally, our proficiency extends to optimizing trader workspaces, offering comprehensive management of trader voice systems, desktop solutions, and the execution of large-scale trading room technology projects.
Founder and Principal Consultant, Stuart Roberts has over 30 years of experience in Financial Markets Technology specialising in market data, trader voice and workspace solutions.
Stuart has worked for global and regional financial institutions as both a commercial and technology executive. This experience offers him a unique perspective on the complexities of managing market data and trade floor technology within organisations.
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As a seasoned market data manager, my experience affords me unique insights from a customer's viewpoint, which is instrumental in tailoring a market data strategy that truly resonates with consumer needs. When conducting a strategic review for consumers, such as financial institutions or individual traders, I draw upon this expertise to scrutinize how data is procured, managed, and leveraged. This involves a detailed analysis aimed at streamlining data acquisition, optimizing costs, and enhancing the data's actionable intelligence to inform decision-making.
For vendors in the market data space, integrating the customer perspective into your strategy is critical. My hands-on experience as a market data manager enables me to identify with the customers' data consumption behaviors, preferences, and pain points. This empathetic approach is pivotal when advising vendors on how to structure their offerings. It allows for the development of nuanced data solutions that are not only customer-centric but also forward-looking, addressing unmet needs and adapting to changing market conditions.
Our strategic review service is comprehensive, taking into account these dual perspectives. For consumers, the focus is on aligning market data with business goals to enhance efficiency and analytical depth. For vendors, the strategy involves innovating around data delivery, quality assurance, and pricing structures, informed by real customer usage and expectations.
By leveraging my background in market data management, I can help you craft a strategy that not only achieves your business objectives but also elevates your position in the eyes of your customers, whether you are a vendor looking to refine your product offerings or a consumer aiming to capitalize on market data to drive profitability and growth.
Modernizing your market data distribution systems encompasses a multitude of strategic improvements. This involves migrating to cloud-based solutions which offer a myriad of benefits compared to traditional systems.
By transitioning to the cloud, you can harness the power of scalable resources that adjust to your demand, ensuring that you pay only for what you use. Moreover, cloud systems facilitate improved data management and analytics capabilities, allowing for real-time insights and decision-making. This shift also promises enhanced security features, as cloud providers typically offer robust cybersecurity measures that are continuously updated against the latest threats.
In addition to the technical advantages, moving to the cloud can lead to significant cost savings. Traditional deployed systems often come with high upfront capital expenditures for hardware and software, as well as ongoing maintenance and support costs. Cloud services, on the other hand, typically operate on a subscription-based model with predictable, recurring expenses that can be adjusted as your business needs evolve. The reduction in physical infrastructure also means savings on energy costs and space, further contributing to a lower total cost of ownership..
Overall, by modernizing your market data systems with cloud solutions, you can achieve a more agile, secure, and cost-effective data distribution infrastructure that aligns with the digital transformation goals of today's competitive business environment.
The global expenditure on market data is on an continual upward trajectory, 2022 set a new record of US$37.3 billion this represented an increase of 4.7% year on year. The projections for 2023 are for a similar uptick.
For most financial institutions, market data costs are typically the third-largest budget item, trailing only behind real estate and personnel expenses. Consequently, this spending category often comes under the microscope of executive leadership during cost-cutting initiatives.
Our team boasts a substantial track record in effectively reducing such expenses across both global and regional financial institutions. We offer services to streamline your expenditure on market data terminals, data feeds, and distribution systems.
We can assess your vendor contracts and pricing structures, recommending either alternative data sources or the renegotiation of existing vendor terms, always with careful consideration of the potential effects on downstream applications.
Our deep knowledge of vendor products and pricing structures along with our longstanding relationships with all the leading vendors allow us to help you achieve the best possible outcome from a cost optimisation initiative.
Our compliance review service meticulously evaluates your adherence to regulations and standards, ensuring that all aspects of your operations meet necessary requirements. This detailed assessment not only identifies potential risks but also strengthens your organization's compliance stance, helping you to avoid legal and financial repercussions.
We also specialize in preparing for and defending against vendor or exchange audits, which are often complex and thorough. Our team offers expert guidance to organize your records and systems pre-audit, ensuring you're fully prepared for the auditors' scrutiny. During the audit, we provide strategic advice and representation to address inquiries and minimize disruptions to your operations.
Additionally, we assist in navigating the intricate and constantly changing policies of vendors and exchanges. Our expertise in interpreting these policies helps you understand and act on the legalities and contractual obligations, ensuring ongoing compliance and preventing costly violations.
In summary, our services equip your organisation with the necessary tools and support to maintain a solid compliance framework, effectively prepare for audits, and confidently understand and adhere to vendor and exchange policies.
Our comprehensive market data training program is meticulously designed to cater to both the technical skills and commercial acumen required by market data professionals. This training is essential for staff who handle the complex and dynamic nature of market data within your organization. By providing them with in-depth knowledge and practical skills, we ensure that your team is well-equipped to manage and utilize market data effectively, aligning with industry best practices and regulatory standards.
For technical staff, our training encompasses a deep dive into the architecture, systems, and tools that are pivotal in managing market data. This includes understanding the nuances of data procurement, integration, and management, as well as the technical skills needed to navigate and leverage advanced market data platforms and applications.
On the commercial side, we tailor our training to impart a thorough understanding of market data licensing, contracts, and vendor management. This knowledge is crucial for making informed decisions that affect the cost and compliance aspects of market data. Commercial staff will gain insights into negotiating contracts, managing vendor relationships, and optimizing market data spend without compromising on the quality and reliability of data.
For developers, we provide specialized training on market data compliance. This training is crucial in preventing unauthorized data usage and mitigating the risk of costly non-compliance penalties. Developers learn about the legal frameworks governing market data, the importance of adhering to licensing agreements, and the best practices for embedding compliance into the software development lifecycle. By proactively addressing these areas, we help organizations minimize their exposure to audit risks and ensure that developers are creating solutions that are compliant by design.
Ultimately, our training program is not just about imparting knowledge; it's about equipping your market data staff with the foresight and tools to navigate the complexities of market data in a way that supports your business objectives and safeguards against compliance breaches.
Our service offerings encompass comprehensive expertise in trade voice and recording systems, which are critical components in the trading environment. We have specialized knowledge in deploying and managing industry-leading systems such as IPC, BT, Cloud9, and Speakerbus. These systems are essential for traders who require reliable and efficient communication tools to execute trades and collaborate with team members and clients.
In addition to voice communication systems, we offer expertise in Trader desktop solutions, accommodating both dedicated PC setups and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) systems. Our approach is to provide traders with powerful, flexible, and secure desktop environments that support a wide range of trading applications and analytical tools. By leveraging the latest in desktop virtualization technology, we can deliver a seamless trading experience that enhances performance while maintaining security and compliance with industry standards.
Furthermore, we extend our expertise to managing large trade floor infrastructure projects. These projects can range from designing and implementing new trading floor setups to upgrading existing infrastructure. Our project management skills are critical in coordinating the complex logistics that these large-scale projects entail. We handle the full project lifecycle—from initial consultation and system design to procurement, installation, and ongoing maintenance. Our approach is meticulous and structured, ensuring that every aspect of the trade floor infrastructure is engineered to support high-stakes trading operations.
During these projects, we prioritize minimal disruption to daily trading activities, aiming for a seamless transition to the new systems. Our team works closely with IT departments, vendors, and trading personnel to ensure that all technical requirements are met. This includes network architecture, data security, redundancy systems, and user training. With our guidance, trading floors become environments where technology facilitates peak performance, allowing traders to focus on the markets without concern for the underlying infrastructure.
Formed in 2018, Oceanic Consulting Group (OCG) was set out to change the professional services landscape in Australia, by bringing experienced industry professionals to deal with complex issues in a structured and focused way. OCG advises the financial services industry as strategic partners in achieving success. Our strategic focus areas provide clients practical advice informed by experience and deep-subject knowledge.
Our leaders have been debating, designing and successfully implementing a string of ‘firsts’ for over two decades. In both Australia and the UK, their work now forms the basis of what clients, regulators and independent experts expect from successful programs. With a strong track record of delivery, OCG's purpose-driven approach makes a notable impact on clients when it matters most.
Arcontech is the leading independent provider of real-time market data management solutions. With multi-source data collection, value added processing, publishing, distribution and display, Arcontech provides a highly performant, cost effective and flexible alternative to traditional market data infrastructure or building it yourself.
We support open-source solutions as a further means for our clients to reduce cost and provide them with the flexibility to choose or change; vendor, data or infrastructure.Our clients include Global Tier 1 and Tier 2 financial market participants along with key market regulators and we would be delighted to discuss whether we can help with your market data needs, real-time or otherwise, whatever type of institution you are.
Alveo is the leader in market data integration and analytics solutions for financial services. Focused on optimizing data flows for business user self-service, we provide cloud-native data aggregation and data quality management that enables clients to easily access trusted data while maximizing their data ROI. Through our managed services, we ensure that clients can smoothly onboard, prepare and validate data for use in operations, trading, investment management, pricing, risk, reporting and machine learning.
We service a global client base and our award-winning technology provides easy integration into business user workflows and a proven platform for advanced analytics. Through combining deep domain expertise with latest open-source technologies, we help financial institutions ensure high quality data, optimize market data cost and maximize productivity.