With MiFID II Unbundling Looming, Commcise and TR Roll Out Research Capabilities

Amid media reports that sell-side firms are struggling to settle on commercial arrangements for subscriptions to their unbundled research services post-MiFID II, service providers are starting to roll out solutions aimed at helping buy-side firms receive, manage and pay for research under the new arrangements.

MiFID II will require buy-side firms to justify how they source and what they pay for research and execution. This unbundling of research from execution services is forcing brokers to compete on price and functionality, hence the hand-wringing over how to price and distribute research services.

But while the sell side settles on how to commercialise its research going forward, technology suppliers have begun to incorporate new functionality for handling unbundled services into their offerings.

This week, for example, Commcise announced that Nordea Asset Management had implemented its commission management and research evaluation platform to help it comply with MiFID II’S Research Payment Account (RPA) provisions. The cloud-based CommciseBUY platform is being used by Nordea Asset Management, part of the Nordea group, one of Scandinavia’s largest financial services providers, to ensure fair allocation processing and support the group’s RPA management strategy.

Meanwhile, Thomson Reuters has added MiFID II research unbundling capability to its flagship Eikon market data desktop service. Eikon’s Research Management Console supports seamless request and response capability that allows communication between buy-side firms and their sell-side research suppliers. Eikon’s Research Entitlement API offers contributor CRM integration. As part of the initiative, Thomson Reuters has upgraded its readership reporting systems to offer improved usage tracking for buy-side firms.

The combined platform will allow research consumers to assess sell-side analyst quality, manage entitlements to external research, gain insights quicker through improved research discovery, and effectively evaluate a firm’s research team.