An online marketplace for research, promising full MiFID II compliance for the buy-side, has launched today.
RSRCHXchange has brought an online exchange for institutional research to market, saying it will enable the buy-side to comply with MiFID II’s unbundling proposals while reducing the compliance overhead.
It aims to provide access to research from suppliers, with due diligence and compliance information on-hand for buy-side firms to provide to their own compliance departments.
“When I worked on the buy-side, the minimum time it ever took for compliance to perform due diligence on a new research provider was a week, but usually it would be much longer,” said RSRCHXchange co-founder Jeremy Davies.
Davies added that, in a world where people have come to expect access to information in real-time, this was no longer acceptable.
Aside from its compliance functions, the company wants to provide a very broad range of research reports that are fully priced (a likely requirement post-MiFID II), with both hard and soft dollar payment options.
It will also feature a rating star system to enable buy-side firms to judge whether any given piece of research or provider is offering good value.
The platform was developed in conjunction with the buy-side, as Vicky Sanders, co-founder, added: “We launched RSRCHX with the needs of the asset manager of the unbundled era in mind. We have been delighted with the uptake to date and are proud to have more than 50 research providers and a number of prominent buy-side clients on board even before launch, bringing valuable research content to the platform.”
It is primarily focused on growing its European customer base in preparation for MiFID II in 2017, but may then look further afield to grow its offering in other regions such as the US and Asia, saying its offering has broader relevance to the buy-side beyond the regulatory imperative currently affecting European institutions.