US data and analytics firm Visible Alpha has purchased a London-based RegTech company to prepare for the implementation of MiFID II.
The purchase of Alpha Exchange, a research discovery and management platform for investment professionals, comes just weeks before the 3rd January 2018 deadline for the second Markets in Financial Instruments Directive.
Under the new rules, fund managers will have to unbundle research costs from the price of trading and either pay for it themselves or pass on the costs to investors, meaning it is crucial to track the research they use.
By adding Alpha Exchange’s advanced technology platform to its existing services, the company said it will create a unified consumption and collaboration experience across research reports, analyst models and corporate access events backed by a robust compliance framework.
Scott Rosen, CEO of Visible Alpha, added: “With the Alpha Exchange team on board, we will further provide investment professionals with industry-leading tools to streamline and enhance their workflows by focusing on the most relevant and meaningful research content.”
Since setting up in February 2017, Visible Alpha, the company said it has been helping investment firms of all sizes and geographies become MiFID II compliant with research tracking and valuation tools, while enabling idea discovery through its analyst model and deep consensus platform. It claims to have more-than 80 firms with a combined $14tn in assets using its tools and is backed by banks including Citigroup, UBS and Morgan Stanley.
Alpha Exchange was founded in 2016 by a team of former asset management and technical professionals including Emma Margetts, Scott Winship and Alex Santos. The company claims to be the first open network and institutional knowledge exchange for the capital markets community. It works with asset managers, investment banks and independent research providers by providing an end-to-end MiFID II research solution with a unique set of enterprise technology tools.
With the deadline for MiFID II edging closer, innovation in regulatory technology is seen by many in the financial service industry as the go-to solution. In a recent interview with FinTech Global, Craig Wallis, partner and head of trading at OSMO partners, said: “Data management and technology hold the key to successfully meeting MiFID2 requirements.”
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