An update from our data vendors
Over the past days, our vendor management team has been actively engaging with every one of our vendors, to inquire about their business continuity plans.
The message back has been consistent. Like most businesses, data vendors have implemented their continuity plans in the past weeks, to ensure the health of their staff and the uninterrupted running of their operations. Most of their employees are now working remotely, with only a few on site for business-critical matters. Many are also investing in new features and services to better serve their clients in these difficult times.
For example, Bloomberg’s teams are working around the clock to ensure that their systems are functioning smoothly. They’re also developing new products and functions to stay ahead of higher trading volumes, and they’ve helped record numbers install Bloomberg Anywhere software (including us at Kneip) The teams at Refinitiv are focusing on three key areas: ensuring service continuity with well-established remote working capabilities, providing remote access capabilities to core Refinitiv products, and delivering real-time market insight to help clients navigate the markets with trusted and real-time data and insight on COVID-19.
SIX decided to implement “Work from Home” for all locations worldwide as of 17 March, to ensure that all services for the Financial Center and SIX clients are guaranteed. SIX has also implemented a “split operation” for all business-critical functions at all their 20 locations worldwide until further notice, meaning that 50% of employees work in the office and 50% work from home.
FundConnect’s entire organisation is now working remotely from 5 different countries, and they have not experienced any limitations or and interruptions in their activities. Allfunds have implemented new measures to continue to deliver their services as usual during these extraordinary times. Nearly 100% of their staff are working remotely or from one of their operational hubs around the world, and they have reinforced their web platform “Connect” to offer more digital solutions to help facilitate regular business functions.
Meanwhile, many of the newspapers that we spoke to are going through similar changes. So far, their outputs remain unchanged, but depending on where they are, it seems likely that some will soon only make their digital media available, because the physical distribution of printed newspapers may be halted by government decree.
We will continue to stay in touch with all our partners as the situation progresses and relay the information back to our clients.