Best Market Data Provider (Exchange): London Stock Exchange

After a year such as 2017, it comes as no surprise that readers have flocked to vote for an exchange that was then focused heavily on responding to new regulation, pushing out new feeds and content sets to help customers overcome major regulatory reform. The London Stock Exchange (LSE) was named Best Market Data Provider (Exchange) for a second year in a row in recognition of its work in preparation for the the revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (Mifid II). 

In the past year, LSE has focused on ensuring seamless Mifid II compliance for customers, making significant changes to the Group Ticker Plant (GTP) feed and introducing a post-trade Mifid II compliance feed, which runs in parallel with the existing feed. Simon Youdan, head of business development at LSE Real Time Data, explains that preparation for regulations has allowed clients wanting to make minimal changes to derive some Mifid II content from the original GTP feed—which was the preference for most firms—while additional Mifid II content is made available via the new feed. 

In addition, TRADEcho—the brand launched in partnership with Simplitium—has introduced pre- and post‑trade transparency services. Youdan says the launch was well received in the marketplace because TRADEcho post-trade data, which is disseminated via the GTP, is free both as a real-time or delayed feed. 

For LSE, the other significant Mifid II-driven change has been disaggregation of content. “We spent nearly all of last year speaking to our customers about how they wanted us to interpret disaggregation,” says Youdan, and the main feedback was that firms wanted it to be as simple as possible. This resulted in LSE not altering existing products, while adding commercial disaggregation packages for specific content, such as exchange-traded funds and alternative investment market data, which allows customers to pay for only a small segment of data. 

As technology advances, more firms are expected to gain a detailed overview of data usage, and the new commercial disaggregation packages could help firms reduce data costs.

One change expected to affect how firms take market data is the move to the cloud. “Cloud is very important,” says Youdan, and LSE is currently moving historical data to a cloud environment to improve delivery of its dataset. As part of a broader strategy, LSE is also accumulating wider groups of data into the cloud, and Youdan says this will enable the exchange to see how added services can be provided on the back of the extensive content sets, which range from exchange data to Stock Exchange Daily Official List identifiers.

Read more about the IMD/IRD Awards 2018 winners