Over the last years market data vendors and exchanges were facing a constant decline in market data usage and therefore in revenue regarding terminals and applications. On the one hand, the financial markets crisis led to a shrinking number of employees and users, on the other hand the increase in automatization with regards to applications as well as the switch of many tasks from human beings to systems led to a reduction in data and terminal usage. Under these circumstances Market Data Vendors and Exchanges try to compensate for this revenue loss by introducing new and – for themselves – more favorable contract and license models. On top of that, they eliminate grey areas of data usage and finish existing standstill agreements or waivers. In order to impose their new rules they check their compliance more often and more thoroughly in the form of audits which are combined with on-site investigations. This means an enormous increase of the risk to be obliged to pay a fine due to non-compliant data usage.
The challenges for market data managers have considerably increased under these circumstances: