“High quality market data are the building blocks of financial services technology, but access can be costly for early stage companies,” said Sally Moore, managing director and head of strategic alliances at IHS Markit. “This program removes that barrier and helps the next generation of fintech startups accelerate the product development cycle and bring more innovation to our market.”

“We know from experience working with and investing in fintech startups that access to market data is make or break for an effective product research and development,” said Mark Whitcroft, founding partner at Illuminate Financial. “Our mission is to help promising companies bring new technologies and new thinking to the financial sector and we are excited to work with IHS Markit to promote innovation in the capital markets industry.”

Illuminate Financial will use its expertise to screen program applicants based on the strength of company management, development teams, business plans, funding and data requirements. Highly-qualified companies selected for the program will be licensed, according to their use cases, to receive select fixed income and equity market datasets from IHS Markit. These datasets include:

Pricing and Reference Data: bonds, commodities, CDS, OTC derivatives, securities lending pricing data, structured products, syndicated loans
Indexes: Markit CDS index families, iBoxx bond indexes, Markit Purchasing Managers Indexes
Analytics: dividend forecasting, ETP data, private equity valuations, research signals