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 Supports Open Source Identifiers in Reference Data Utility

Subscribe to our newsletter

SmartStream Technologies is planning to help users of its Reference Data Utility – or SPReD Securities Product Reference Data platform – adopt open source identifiers following an agreement with Thomson Reuters under which the latter will provide reference data including open source PermID identifiers to the utility. The company is also in conversation with Bloomberg about including Financial Instrument Global Identifiers (FIGIs), formerly Bloomberg Global Identifiers (BBGIDs), in the reference data it will manage on behalf of utility customers.

SPReD was officially unveiled 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.

The utility cleanses, validates and cross references instrument data and associated legal entity data using a one-to-many model designed to deliver cost savings and operations improvements for customers. Its initial focus is on exchange listed derivatives, with equities and fixed income instruments to follow.

While SPReD already integrates and cross-references data from about 20 data vendors and around 70 exchanges, its work with Thomson Reuters’ machine readable PermID, and potentially Bloomberg’s FIGI, takes the utility and its customers into the realm of open source symbology that could ease the integration and cross-referencing challenges presented by multiple, and not always complete, vendor and proprietary identifiers.

Joseph Turso, vice president, SmartStream, says: “We are keen to support the open source initiative. Some of our customers that already use Thomson Reuters reference data would like to adopt PermID, so we will try to facilitate that. We are also talking to Bloomberg about making the FIGI available. Our customers are excited about the industry move towards a more open environment as it could reduce the complexity of cross-referencing numerous proprietary and vendor identifiers.

“In 2016, we expect the adoption of both PermID and the FIGI to be well underway, but as the utility is data source agnostic we can continue to manage all the proprietary identifiers used by our customers while facilitating adoption of open source identifiers.”

Debra Walton, chief content and product officer at Thomson Reuters, adds: “We are particularly pleased that SmartStream has chosen to use Thomson Reuters PermID as this is an important step for the industry in solving the increasingly complex challenge of data integration and linking.”

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Upcoming Webinar: Streamlining trading and investment processes with data standards and identifiers

3 June 2025 10:00am ET | 3:00pm London | 4:00pm CET Duration: 50 Minutes Financial institutions are integrating not only greater volumes of data for use across their organisation but also more varieties of data. As well, that data is being applied to more use cases than ever before, especially regulatory compliance and ESG integration....

BLOG

Scale and Governance Top Drivers of Modern Data Architecture Plans: Webinar Review

Financial institutions are investing in modern technology architectures to bolster the flexibility and scalability of their data management processes as the number of use cases for that information, and the volume of data they ingest, expands. They are also seizing on the latest architectures to strengthen data governance in response to the growing complexity of...

EVENT

TradingTech Summit London

Now in its 14th year the TradingTech Summit London brings together the European trading technology capital markets industry and examines the latest changes and innovations in trading technology and explores how technology is being deployed to create an edge in sell side and buy side capital markets financial institutions.

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...