Ms Leslie, who heads up Thomson Reuters’ pricing and references services division from the company’s headquarters in London, spoke to InvestorDaily about what differentiates her business from competitors like Bloomberg.
“Some providers say, ‘Here’s the price – it’s come out of a box, and we’re not going to tell you how it was calculated’,” she said, adding that Thomson Reuters takes “almost completely the opposite view”.
“[We say,] ‘Here’s the name of the person who did it, what algorithm they used, here are the prices they observed in the market that were relevant’,” Ms Leslie said.
Thomson Reuters also provides its clients with credit events that may have driven a change in valuations, the benchmark that was tracked, and additional commentary, she said.
“We are enabling organisations to make decisions about trades, to effect those trades, and to manage everything after the trade,” she said.
“What differentiates us [from our competitors] is the breadth of data, the quality, and the degree to which you enable your customers to manage their data.”
APRA’s prudential guide on managing data risk makes it clear that asset management and fund managers will have to provide full transparency about their securities pricing, Ms Leslie said.
“Regulation is demanding that level of transparency and confidence,” she said.
Thomson Reuters’ head of market development in the Pacific, James Land, said the company has an “open business” – a principle that runs through the entire organisation.
“We’re very much an open platform, as opposed to the closed platform that some of our competitors currently have,” Mr Land said.
