Substantive Research has published a new study on market data pricing, expanding its analysis to include vendors in the debt, credit, and leveraged finance sectors. The new coverage reflects the significant growth of private markets, particularly private credit, where assets under management recently surpassed $3 trillion. The study highlights that the illiquid and less transparent nature of these assets has created an urgent need for accurate data from third-party sources as investors seek alpha opportunities.
The findings show increasingly aggressive behaviour from data providers. Consumers are facing renewal increases of between 10% and 40%, even for contracts valued between $100k and $1m. Vendors are also adopting inflexible, “take-it-or-leave-it” stances during negotiations, limiting buyers’ power. While pricing inconsistency is less extreme than in other data areas like ratings and terminals, the study found that comparable firms can still pay up to 20% more for the same products and use cases from the same vendor.
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