IMD & IRD Awards 2023: Most innovative market data project—Refinitiv, an LSEG business

Overview

Refinitiv has developed Real-Time–Optimized in response to client demand for a cloud-based feed. It is designed to help clients manage expanding data volumes, reducing the need to invest in upgrading on-premises capacity and increasing agility.

The solution

Refinitiv Real-Time–Optimized is a real-time, API-delivered pricing feed that updates three times per second. It is available via AWS and can be piped to users’ virtual private clouds. The data is aligned to Refinitiv’s data model via the firm’s symbology. It is compatible with all Real-Time products and uses a range of connectivity options. Data is discoverable using identifiers, Refinitiv symbology, and search APIs, facilitating onboarding and integration with a firm’s downstream applications. Clients can access 90 million financial instruments across over 550 venues, plus news, proprietary content, and third-party sources.

Secret sauce

The cloud-based nature of Real-Time–Optimized solves a range of on-premises issues for user-firms. It is cloud-agnostic and compatible with all Real-Time products. The alignment with Refinitiv’s data model enables firms to connect with other data sources, such as ESG, tick history data and machine-ready news. Refinitiv continues to invest in Real-Time–Optimized, providing transparency and resilience to its clients.

Recent enhancements

• Adding Tokyo and Frankfurt hubs to increase connectivity points and offer in-region resiliency for all geographies
• Adding an improved authentication protocol, offering greater security, and enabling more flexible session management. Customers can build logic into their connections, improving resiliency and reducing costs.

Future objectives

• Enabling new customers to self-certify their recently purchased application service IDs, streamlining and speeding up the onboarding process
• Providing all customers with the ability to manage their own entitlements for their accounts through a new platform admin portal
• Launching service insight dashboards, providing customers with real-time insight into the health of the platform and a detailed breakdown of the sessions connected to Real-Time–Optimized

Why they won

Refinitiv wins the most innovative market data project in this year’s IMD & IRD Awards on the back of its Real-Time–Optimized initiative, a real-time, API-delivered pricing feed that updates three times per second. Real-Time–Optimized is designed to be integrated directly into clients’ infrastructures, which helps streamline and simplify their technology estates. Compatibility with Refinitiv’s other real-time offerings means that user-firms aren’t burdened with data compatibility/wrangling issues, which in turn makes the vendor’s entire stable of real-time data that much more appealing.