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

The Proof is in the Pudding

Subscribe to our newsletter

Lunch – London, so curry, of course – with a disillusioned reference data friend the other day leads us to take stock a bit of where this reference data marketplace has arrived, and from whence it came.

Reference Data Review will be four years old this year. Looking back over the archive – as we do as we put together each issue – we find a unique and valuable treasure trove. But not just of data or information, not just the facts of the evolution of this marketplace. Rather, what will continue to make Reference Data Review unique is our cataloguing of the attitudes of the players within the marketplace as they have twisted and changed over time.

Four years isn’t a very long time. But in reference data it’s been an age. When we started out with Reference Data Review, it was a little-known backwater, really, of the much more sexy and lucrative market data industry, an area we knew well from years of experience within it. Today, it’s a recognized, perhaps mature, subsegment of the financial data marketplace. One that’s possibly overcrowded with too many me-too events, and a raft of bottom-feeders struggling to get in on the act.

But the plus side is how the market’s attitude has evolved from those early days of Reference Data Review. Then, it was all about definitions, approaches, corporate governance, buy-in and ROI. It was about Powerpoint presentations, vapourware and acquisitions of major centralized databases that ultimately faded and died.

Of course, it still is about all those things. But on top of that, our industry now routinely throws up real implementations. This issue, for example, lists a range of projects, ranging from the mighty – ING – to the not so. And this is only the deals we managed to squeeze into this month’s 16+ pages.

So why was our reference data friend so reticent?

Perhaps because of the slow pace of change, in the face of a myriad compelling reasons why financial institutions should tear out their ageing IT infrastructures and replace them with architectures that make data a help rather than a hindrance? That’s part of it.

What’s transpiring from all the white papers, trade conference presentations, operations group powerpoints and, indeed, contributed Reference Data Review articles, is that many of the projects being undertaken by real people in the marketplace aren’t always the over-arching, architecture-busting sea-change implementations that many in our space had envisioned. Rather, they’re highly selective deals, aimed at addressing a very specific business issue. Much like most business projects should be, really. Is it time, then, to pack our bags and go home? Of course not. We just need to get used to operating in what is turning out to be the equilibrium state of the industry, where reference data projects are conducted to deal with practical problems. Nothing wrong in that.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: Mastering Data Lineage for Risk, Compliance, and AI Governance

Financial institutions are under increasing pressure to ensure data transparency, regulatory compliance, and AI governance. Yet many struggle with fragmented data landscapes, poor lineage tracking and compliance gaps. This webinar will explore how enterprise-grade data lineage can help capital markets participants ensure regulatory compliance with obligations such as BCBS 239, CCAR, IFRS 9, SEC requirements...

BLOG

ISDA Finds GenAI Highly Accurate in Contracts Process but Stresses Need for Good Data

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) has found that a range of generative artificial intelligence models can achieve a very high level of accuracy in extracting and standardising contract details into digital form. The findings suggest that AI can be deployed to reduce time and resources as well as risks when processing data within...

EVENT

AI in Capital Markets Summit New York

The AI in Capital Markets Summit will explore current and emerging trends in AI, the potential of Generative AI and LLMs and how AI can be applied for efficiencies and business value across a number of use cases, in the front and back office of financial institutions. The agenda will explore the risks and challenges of adopting AI and the foundational technologies and data management capabilities that underpin successful deployment.

GUIDE

Regulatory Data Handbook 2025 – Thirteenth Edition

Welcome to the thirteenth edition of A-Team Group’s Regulatory Data Handbook, a unique and practical guide to capital markets regulation, regulatory change, and the data and data management requirements of compliance across Europe, the UK, US and Asia-Pacific. This year’s edition lands at a moment of accelerating regulatory divergence and intensifying data focused supervision. Inside,...