About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

SmartStream Signs Up Data Vendors for Reference Data Utility

Subscribe to our newsletter

SmartStream Technologies is building out its Reference Data Utility (RDU) – informally known as the SPReD Securities Product Reference Data platform – through the addition of data vendor agreements with Interactive Data, Exchange Data International, SIX Financial Information, S&P Capital IQ, S&P Dow Jones Indices and Euromoney Tradedata.

These agreements add to a tie-up with Thomson Reuters made last month and covering reference data including the company’s open source PermID identifiers. SmartStream is also working towards agreements with Markit on credit default swaps reference data, with Bloomberg on reference data including Financial Instrument Global Identifiers, formerly Bloomberg Global Identifiers, and with other data vendors providing data that clients want the RDU to process on their behalf.

The company says both client and data vendor interest in the utility is high, and despite some early misgivings about the role of data vendors in relation to utilities, no data vendors have yet refused to work with the RDU. Instead, they view the utility model as an additional channel to distribute their data.

Philippe Chambadal, CEO at SmartStream, explains: “Clients and prospects want to spend more with their data vendors, not less, as a result of regulatory initiatives or to add value to their businesses. The RDU’s mission is to lower the cost of processing reference data. Delivering on that mission creates opportunities for data vendors as we open up space for additional spend by lowering data integration costs, one of the biggest barriers to purchasing more vendor data.”

While SmartStream has reached a number of agreements with data vendors, it declines to say which are up and running at the utility, but does confirm that exchange feeds used by the investment banks backing the RDU are being outsourced to the utility and that further additions will be made to the data vendor community working with the utility in line with client requirements.

The SmartStream RDU was officially launched last month and is owned jointly by SmartStream, which is the largest shareholder, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley. It is, essentially, SmartStream’s existing multi-tenanted data management service dropped into a new subsidiary company and already has over 20 customers including the founding banks as well as other banks, hedge funds and exchanges.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: How to simplify and modernize data architecture to unleash data value and innovation

The data needs of financial institutions are growing at pace as new formats and greater volumes of information are integrated into their systems. With this has come greater complexity in managing and governing that data, amplifying pain points along data pipelines. In response, innovative new streamlined and flexible architectures have emerged that can absorb and...

BLOG

Regulatory Volatility Offers Opportunity to Mine Value from Compliance Data

A new era of regulatory change is presenting institutions with a golden opportunity to prosper from the troves of data they need to comply with reporting obligations. Information required by market overseers has value that goes beyond its obligatory use in disclosures and companies that put it to wider use stand to gain a competitive...

EVENT

RegTech Summit New York

Now in its 9th year, the RegTech Summit in New York will bring together the RegTech ecosystem to explore how the North American capital markets financial industry can leverage technology to drive innovation, cut costs and support regulatory change.

GUIDE

AI in Capital Markets: Practical Insight for a Transforming Industry – Free Handbook

AI is no longer on the horizon – it’s embedded in the infrastructure of modern capital markets. But separating real impact from inflated promises requires a grounded, practical understanding. The AI in Capital Markets Handbook 2025 provides exactly that. Designed for data-driven professionals across the trade life-cycle, compliance, infrastructure, and strategy, this handbook goes beyond...