Due to upcoming MiFID II regulations, some asset managers will be opting to pay for research using a Research Payment Account (RPA), which is charged to the client.

Bloomberg and Cowen’s Westminster RPA’s integrated offerings will enable mutual customers to easily manage research subscriptions, track consumption, evaluate research quality, create MiFID-compliant budgets, attribute value (broker vote), manage invoices, and process payments through their RPAs or otherwise.

“Westminster Research Associates is focused on offering tools that enable our clients to easily and efficiently comply with the unbundling requirements of MiFID II,” said Chris Tiscornia, CEO of Westminster Research Associates. “By integrating with Bloomberg on this initiative, we are pleased to extend both our CSA aggregation and RPA offerings to flexibly provide end-to-end solutions that will allow our mutual clients to be prepared to address their forthcoming budgetary, valuation, payment and research needs.”

Robert Friend, Global Head of Sell-Side Solutions and Research, said: “Our objective with this collaboration is to draw on our respective strengths to offer integrated tools designed to help firms comply with MiFID II with minimum friction on their workflows, so they can focus on making business decisions, not on administrative tasks. The combined offerings allow Bloomberg to expand its holistic suite of seamlessly integrated MiFID II solutions by enabling firms to share and receive research, evaluate it, and pay for it in a user-friendly way.”

Cowen’s Westminster Research Associates is an industry leading broker-dealer that specializes in providing full service custodial aggregation solutions to over 700 institutional clients. Leveraging this foundation, Westminster RPA provides a suite of tools that allow investment managers to set research budgets by strategy, allocate payments and generate compliant reports, thereby allowing them to address the unbundling challenges posed by MiFID II.