A few years back I started a series of conversations with the three leading Registrars in the UK about encouraging them to enter the data market. The idea was to consolidate all their data and put it into an electronic standard for distribution to the existing data chain under license. The result would have been dramatic; with data costs across the industry plummeting as the data vendors massively reduced their costs. The industry would have moved into a new age of corporate efficiency and a breach would have been made in the global markets data problems, as this model could have been adopted in virtually every market.

So what went wrong?

Well first it was a challenge to keep all three competing Registrars on the same page, as each thought they had the lion's share of the market and deserved most return. This was a fatuous argument, as each was not losing anything, as all three were not currently included the industry data chain. So the commercials were a bit of a sticking point.

The main problem was funding the development of the solution. It was imperative that each vendor in the data market had equal access at an equal cost so as not to threaten the existing data structures in the market. Funding had to be from an independent source and the creation of the solution had to be managed independently without bias.

Gaining funds for producing the solution proved virtually impossible as most business people outside of the data industry cannot believe that one of the world's greatest industries which includes all of the largest financial institutions, support such an inefficient and expensive data market. You can see their point!

The securities industry, through its numerous standards committees, you might have thought, were a source of pushing this solution forward. However, vested interest abounds in these groups and they almost appear not to want to see a conclusion to the problem. During the project we discussed openly with a number of data vendors the idea of taking the Registrars data and one of them decided to contact individual Treasurers to gain direct support from the Corporates. But this route is likely to fail as the ultimate solution demands 100% of the UK data and there is no doubt that competing data vendors and other agencies will not stand idly by and will create their own solution, putting the industry back where it started, hence the need for the supply to come via an independent.

So without funding the project began to whither and the Registrars just carried on as usual.

To summarise, do not believe anyone that says there is no solution to the standardisation of data. There is, but vested interests will always prevent implementation. Yet another story of how the securities industry is individually self promoting, but in the end will it be collectively defeating?