Bloomberg today announced that BMO Global Asset Management and Union Investment have adopted Bloomberg’s Research Management Solutions (RMS) in response to the new MiFID II requirements regarding investment research.

Bloomberg’s RMS offer a single solution that enables buy-side firms to access, manage, value and budget for broker research and interactions, improving transparency and operational efficiency while simplifying MiFID II compliance. Under the requirements of the new regime, buy-side firms need additional control over which research services they consume, and ways to pay for these research services separate from execution services. Firms have also expressed a need for solutions to value the research, budget for it, and report back to their clients.

According to Holly Anderson, Business Manager, Investment EMEA at BMO Global Asset Management: “We have been using both the research evaluation and interactions monitoring tools provided by Bloomberg since the end of 2017 as part of our MiFID II solution. Bloomberg has been a very efficient interface between us and the sell-side as we all navigate this new regulatory landscape and the need to unbundle and value broker-provided services. The team has been on hand to discuss requirements, formulate solutions and provide training throughout the process; enabling a smooth transition for our investment teams.”

Dr. Frank Engels, Chief Information Officer at Union Investment said: “We have been using the Bloomberg RMS solution for research procurement, entitlement, interaction analysis and the research vote process since January 2018 as part of Union Investment’s MiFID II approach. While the platform is new and will evolve further over time, we feel confident that the Bloomberg RMS solution comes with the advantage of a fully integrated and highly automated solution combined with a comparably high level of data consistency.”

Andrew Skala, Head of research solutions at Bloomberg, said: “We are delighted that our engagement with BMO Global Asset Management and Union Investment resulted in solutions that streamline the entire MiFID II research procurement, compliance and budgeting process for buy-side firms. As with all MiFID II solutions we provide, our aim is to help firms comply with minimum friction on their workflows, so they can focus on making business decisions, not on compliance or administrative tasks.”

With Bloomberg’s RMS, BMO Global Asset Management and Union Investment can manage entitlements to block their receipt of certain content except from their preferred providers. In addition, Bloomberg’s comprehensive analytics and reporting tools allow firms to monitor and evaluate corporate access, research, and sales services by providing firms with information on their research interactions sourced from the Terminal, Microsoft Outlook and bespoke broker files. Finally, firms can use Bloomberg’s valuation scorecards or custom frameworks to track research consumption and interactions, helping them to intelligently manage their budgets.

Bloomberg’s RMS are fully integrated with, and complement the other investment workflow solutions available on the Terminal, including Bloomberg’s data, news, analytics, communications and trading solutions. Firms can also leverage the solutions to manage research invoices and to connect to parties who will process payments through RPAs or otherwise.

Source: Bloomberg