Waypoint Launches Archon to Tackle Market Data Entitlement Complexity

Waypoint Trading Solutions, the TNS business built on the combination of TNS Financial Markets and Radianz, has launched a new market data entitlement management platform designed to give financial institutions greater control over user permissions, exchange reporting and the costs associated with market data consumption.

The launch extends Waypoint’s growing focus on the operational side of market data management, an area that has become increasingly important as firms consume data from more venues, vendors and applications across increasingly distributed trading environments.

Market data entitlements sit at the intersection of cost control and compliance. Exchanges and other data providers typically impose detailed licensing and reporting requirements governing which users and devices can access their data. CME Group’s current information policies, for example, require internal controls capable of accounting for enabled access, maintaining historical audit trails and generating reports covering software-controlled entitlement activations and deactivations.

For large financial institutions, keeping track of those permissions can become a significant administrative task, particularly where market data is distributed across multiple desks, locations, applications and infrastructure environments.

“Archon is the first of several strategic product announcements we will be making this year,” says Jeff Mezger, VP of Product Management at Waypoint Trading Solutions. “We continue to listen closely to our customers, both internal and external, and invest in developing products that deliver real ease of use and meaningful cost savings.”

Extending the market data management stack

Archon expands Waypoint’s Sentinel offering with a dedicated capability for managing market data entitlements. Sentinel is one of three core areas within Waypoint, alongside Radianz, which provides global financial connectivity, and Xpress, its managed low-latency infrastructure and exchange access business. Sentinel focuses on managed market data operations, including infrastructure, distribution, entitlements and reporting.

The business brings together TNS’s existing market data services with capabilities added through its 2023 acquisition of West Highland Support Services. Entitlement management was already part of that offering, but Archon provides a dedicated enterprise platform through which firms can centralise and automate the process.

It sits alongside Waypoint’s Data Usage Optimizer (DUO), which analyses market data consumption to identify unused services and potential opportunities to reduce subscription costs. The two products therefore address different parts of the same operational challenge: DUO provides visibility into what market data is being consumed, while Archon provides greater control over who is entitled to access it.

Managing a more distributed environment

The need for that control is growing as firms consume market data across more applications, locations and infrastructure environments. The same underlying data may be accessed through desktops, trading applications, algorithms and other systems, increasing the complexity of tracking permissions and meeting exchange reporting requirements.

Archon provides a central control point for those entitlements, while its API allows firms to integrate the system into existing trading environments. For Waypoint, the launch also represents the next stage in the development of its market data offering following the creation of the business earlier this year.

With further product announcements planned for 2026, Archon points to a broader focus on tools that help firms manage the operational complexity and cost of their market data estates.