Advancing Data Democratisation: The partnership between BMLL and Snowflake
Paul Humphrey, Chief Executive Officer, BMLL.
14 September, 2023
As we enter a very busy last quarter, I am extremely pleased to share that BMLL has not only secured investment from Snowflake Ventures, but has also entered into an exciting new partnership with Snowflake to deliver granular, Level 3 order book data and analytics on a global scale. We are very proud of this collaboration; it demonstrates that our data and analytics capabilities are one of the best use-cases for large-scale, financial market data in the cloud.
Looking back over the last 12 months, I can say that we have delivered on what our clients have asked for. Since securing our Series B funding just under a year ago, we have worked tirelessly to expand our coverage to include Japan, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, China and South Africa, with even more new data sets to be added over the coming months. We have increased our team of data scientists and engineers, as well as technical and development staff. And, we have increased our sales and go-to-market teams, and grown the organisation with our first overseas office in the USA.
So how do we make it easier for new clients to access our data?
We are seeing increasing demand for our global content, with market participants looking to consume our data to enhance their own products. They need a deeper understanding of market shifts, liquidity dynamics and opportunities for alpha generation. In order to gain insight, they need access to high-quality, full-depth historical data - engineered and formatted ready for use. They also want the ability to combine BMLL’s historical market data with their own private order and trade data, thereby keeping control of their data in their own secure Snowflake cloud environment.
The distribution of BMLL’s market data via the Snowflake Marketplace will enable this for so many more capital market participants, especially as Snowflake continues to expand its cloud-native platform. The partnership will allow Snowflake’s growing number of capital market clients to access BMLL’s best, large-scale content without the unnecessary headache of data engineering and cost of data maintenance. Clients no longer need to own, store and manage these data sets, time and time again. Instead, they can concentrate on differentiating themselves by what they do with the data, not by owning it! Essentially, BMLL’s partnership with Snowflake will help firms leapfrog infrastructure planning and implementation time, lower costs, and accelerate time to market.
At the same time, sophisticated users of BMLL data within Snowflake Marketplace are able to share that data across their firms without replicating it multiple times across teams, further democratising access to the data set. This data collaboration - either within an organisation across its team members or business units, or externally with its ecosystem of partners, suppliers, and customers ultimately creates a value proposition that removes internal silos and barriers to accessing data by many. This increased transparency and collaboration kick-starts a virtuous cycle of continued innovation and differentiation. Snowflake Marketplace is an enabler for global customers to access rich, curated content, and early adopters have already reaped the benefits of this virtuous cycle. Now the rest of the market can do so too.
Democratising data and reducing costs are two sides of the same coin
As firms across the industry are increasingly under pressure to reduce costs, this further step towards democratising data is crucial. In the case of access to high-quality, curated and maintained historical data and best-in-class analytics, the cost of infrastructure can represent a barrier-to-entry for innovation and insights. With access to BMLL data, clients no longer have to store, manage and engineer this data themselves - over and over again. Accessing BMLL data through Snowflake Marketplace means the cost is significantly reduced as they do not need to allocate the vast amount of quant resources previously needed for data aggregation, cleansing and storage.
Back in 2020 we said the race for speed was over, and the global race for quality data and analytics was on. Cloud adoption is key to making this possible, and is here to stay. This increased focus on cloud technology, perfectly illustrated by the partnership between BMLL and Snowflake, allows for the democratisation of access to high quality, large-scale historical data. Giving market participants choices in how they access this data underpins the drive for democratisation.
But we wouldn't be here without our team and the investors who back our mission.
We want to thank our most recent investor - Snowflake, and our existing investors FactSet, Nasdaq Ventures and IQ Capital’s Growth Fund - who believe in our vision. And of course, none of this would have been possible without the hard work and dedication from our tremendously talented team.
Click here to read more about the Snowflake investment and partnership.