Broker SCB Nears Deal With XData, EOSE to Grow Data Sales, Governance

Swiss-based biofuels and renewable energy broker SCB Group is enlisting OTC data aggregator XData and its UK-based partner EOSE Data, a sales agency and strategic advisor, as part of continuing efforts by the brokerage to grow its data business and expand the reach of its data.

SCB only set up a formal in-house data function and hired its first dedicated data salesperson last year, and is now exploring how it can grow its existing base of distribution partners, as well as strike direct sales deals for its proprietary data, generated from trades that it brokers in niche biofuels and renewables markets.

By working with XData and EOSE, SCB can pursue a range of strategies to expand its data business.

“We set up and manage data businesses. We work with established data functions, or we can work with companies that don’t have an established data business to create a data sales function,” says EOSE CEO Suzanne Lock. “XData aims to take an organization’s data to a wider audience, take it to market, nail down what people can and can’t do with the data, and drive product development.”

This could include providing an outsourced sales agency function to drive sales, establishing formal data governance policies that a firm with a nascent data business may not have had in place or known that it needed, and ultimately contributing to the development of new data products, services, and delivery options, based on client demand.

“XData provides a wide range of comprehensive services, and I definitely think there are many scopes for collaboration for all the areas mentioned,” says Catherine Chen, business manager for market data at SCB. “For the start, I see some services would be more important than others, such as sales agency services and implementing policies and processes, expanding current partnerships, and then moving on to comprehensive product development.”

Once the deal is inked and XData can conduct a detailed review of SCB’s existing data usage and contracts, it may take 10 to 12 weeks to deliver a go-to-market strategy.

“We could drop in a data business in two-and-a-half weeks. The reason it takes longer is having conversations with customers, putting in place policies and compliance, which means getting legal involved… and making an organization understand its commitments and dependencies on data internally as well as externally that they may not have realized before,” Lock says. “For example, who ‘owns’ the data—a desk, or management? Who ‘owns’ that business, and who has the intellectual property rights? … Do we need to review their technology and delivery? Do we need to review brokerage customers and how they use the data? Do we need to look at policies to make sure governance and controls are correct? …. All of these questions take a while to work out.”

Of these, Lock says data governance is one of the key issues: customers need to know how they can use the data, and SCB needs to know how its customers are using its data.

For example, the broker needs to know if a client is using a price to generate an index or for clearing and settlement, so SCB has the right controls in place internally, and can ensure the data is reliable for the use intended by customers, Lock says.

In those products brokered by SCB that are less liquid and trade only perhaps once per day, the data becomes more valuable, Lock says, adding that information about when a contract actually traded can become an important part of a dataset, and can be fed back into future product development.

Lock founded EOSE Data in 2018 after spotting an opportunity to provide an outsourced sales function for growing data businesses. Before that, she spent 13 years at interdealer broker Tradition, as market data commercial manager, data manager, and product marketing executive, prior to which she was a commercial executive at UK-based ticker plant provider CMS Webview, and worked in market services at the International Petroleum Exchange (now owned by Intercontinental Exchange).