FactSet Research Systems, a provider of integrated financial information and analytical applications to the global investment community, has indicated that it is on the hunt for other third party vendor partners to extend its content coverage. The vendor is also contemplating joining the Enterprise Data Management (EDM) Council in the near future to help promote the industry-wide adoption of an international business entity identifier (IBEI), says Ken Zolk, FactSet’s director of content development.
FactSet acts as both a third party content aggregator and provides its own proprietary content, thus giving its clients a choice of data sources, says Zolk. “By partnering with other third party vendors we can extend our coverage,” he explains. “The more relationships we have these vendors, the more content is available to our clients.”
The vendor will therefore be focusing on talking to potential strategic partners that have a “complementary fit” with FactSet’s business over the next six to 12 months, he says. As well as looking for possible third party partnerships, FactSet is also keen to promote the adoption of the IBEI by the industry at large.
To this end, Zolk is a firm believer in an entity driven content model: “Over the last few years a new paradigm has emerged – the industry should no longer look to an issue driven content model, an entity driven model is far more practical. For example, parent subtrees at the entity level allow industry participants to see parent and subsidiary relationships, but these cannot be tracked easily in an issue driven model.”
The requirement for an entity driven content model in the market is being driven by regulations such as Basel II and KYC, says Zolk. “I believe that the entity driven content model is a much better long term model than the issue driven model and it fits in with the trend towards EDM in the market. We are contemplating joining the EDM Council in the future to help promote the IBEI,” he says.
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