This government-funded Singaporean global financial institution decided upon a restructuring of their organisation in 2019, with one of the main features being the consolidation into a single entity of the four asset management businesses that had been acquired over a period of four years. 

Aligned with these reorganisations, was the introduction of a Data Office, with the express intent to improve the overall governance and control of data flows and market data spend across the whole Group. The intention was to create a Centre of Excellence, and ensure that on an on-going basis, market data costs could be contained, reduced and managed tightly.

This is where Kalaxis came in. After a referral from a well-respected UK based veteran of the market data industry, and a review of offerings from three potential suppliers, Kalaxis were selected in the Spring of 2021. The main reason for their selection was they demonstrated a deeper understanding of the requirements, and were independent of any software systems, unlike the other two candidates.

The Group’s annual spend on their primary data vendor was $1.3m per annum, across seven separate silo’d accounts. There was also an arrangement with this vendor that was due to end within 12 months, that was supplying a suite of data at non-standard prices, but which would revert to standard charges during the second Quarter of 2022. The current Services being sourced included bulk files, sets of exchange-traded securities and non-exchange traded price valuations.

Kalaxis undertook the study using its innovative analytics engine, called the KDM Calculator. Developed and enhanced over more than ten years, the engine performs over twenty “What If Scenarios” on the data consumed by the financial institution.

The final report highlighted a fraction over 28% of potential savings, in line with the percentage savings Kalaxis Reports typically identify. The main areas identified were: (I) Cancelling a Bulk file, (II) Switching to a new service that was less expensive, and (III) Reducing the volume of multiple requests (for the same data).

The data manager commented at the time: “Despite the time difference between Singapore and Europe, Kalaxis went out of their way to ensure we communicated regularly, and overall the engagement met with high approval from all involved. They identified more savings than we expected, and with this foundation in place, provided us invaluable insight into the details of the different business units and how and what data they are consuming. We are now ideally placed going forward to operate as a Centre of Excellence. We intend to call upon Kalaxis to assist us with some of the actions required to realise the aforementioned savings.”

Jean-Pierre Gottdiener, Founder and CEO of Kalaxis commented: “This project was a little different from most, because of the non-standard rate card for some of the vendor data that was being consumed. However, the KDM Calculator analytics engine adapted well, and we were able to deliver the Report on time and to budget. We are always delighted when a customer project delivers the strong return on investment we set out to deliver at the outset of any new engagement.”