The MiFID II Delegated Acts (DA) published in early April, have brought long awaited clarification on research procurement processes and research payment accounts. Firms will be required to put into place controls, set up management oversight and create audit trails. Investment firms will be required ‘upon request by their clients or by competent authorities, to provide a summary of the providers paid from this account, the total amount they were paid over a defined period, the benefits and services received by the investment firm’. Furthermore, investment firms must ‘regularly assesses the quality of the research purchased, based on robust quality criteria and its ability to contribute to better investment decisions’.

While research budgets are a vital necessity for asset managers, managing them can be costly and time-consuming; as a result, many firms struggle to build a full picture of their own research usage. Given the unique cloud-based structure of RSRCHX, enhanced data is gathered automatically at the point of consumption.
Available from today, our RSRCHX Dashboard provides asset managers with a MiFID II-compliant, more efficient and systematic way to measure research usage and rate their providers, rather than relying on broker vote systems.

The Dashboard is available free of charge to existing users on our research platform and gives asset managers real time access to research consumption data, quality metrics and spending, saving them time and internal cost by removing third party inputs and manual data entry. The Dashboard will also provide both a firm-level overview and a detailed team & individual analysis of research consumption & spending, in addition to absolute & relative provider rankings.

The head of commission management at a leading London-based asset manager expressed his enthusiasm for the new dashboard, describing it as:

“An excellent, well designed and very user friendly dashboard that is informative and helps us maintain and control our research spend amongst our teams whilst also keeping us in line with the MiFID II research budgeting requirements.”

Vicky Sanders, Co-founder of RSRCHXchange said: “We are very excited to be launching our Dashboard today. Now that the DA’s are published, buy-side firms can move forward in updating their research procurement process in response to MiFID II. A deep understanding and auditable overview of what research they actually use for their investment decisions is now an essential business and regulatory requirement. Whether firms are moving towards paying for research from their own P&L or with client-funded RPAs, this Dashboard is an essential tool. By using our Dashboard, asset managers can be confident their MiFID II research procurement requirements are being fulfilled.”