Financial data users have been frustrated for years by the restrictions legacy data providers have put in their contracts to prohibit the sharing of data within an organization. The advent of cloud computing and remote working have exasperated the situation even more. It is unrealistic for data providers to expect all of the end-users of a data set to physically sit in the same location.
Dan Barnes, a co-founder of The Desk, a magazine for bond traders, recently wrote about the democratization of financial data. His interviews with several industry leaders illustrate how firms want to get more data into the hands of more of their people. No longer is data just for the quants in research – their business side colleagues, with a little technology training (e.g. Python boot camps), can also benefit from having access to financial data.
Financial Data Should Not Be Siloed.
When I started my career 20+ years ago, it was very common for data license agreements to require you to state exactly where a data set was to be stored and used. In a time of limited internet access, no cloud computing, and everyone commuting into the office, maybe that wasn’t such a big ask by data providers.
However, times have changed and it is time for the large, legacy data providers to adapt accordingly. Firms want to share data throughout their organization. At DIH we don’t have any such restrictions (and no ‘purge clauses’ either) when we license our financial data. My fellow data providers need to permit such democratization of data.
The Takeaway.
The appetite for financial data continues to grow within organizations. Firms want to share data with a multitude of end-users. Data licenses need to reflect this new reality.
What about you? Do your data licenses prohibit you from sharing data within your organization as you’d wish? Please comment – I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Also, please connect with DIH on LinkedIn and Twitter.
P.S. You can read the entire article by Dan Barnes at The Desk here… Full Article
Thanks,
Tom Myers
