There’s often an ‘aha’ moment when businesses first realise that the average datasets they engage with daily – once thought to be niche, isolated and confidential – can be leveraged for greater value.
By Mark Randall, director of information services at the JSE
The notion that valuable data should be confined within the walls of a single institution is becoming obsolete, especially when it can be monetised. Aggregated, anonymised or analysed from different angles, the same data may prove invaluable to counterparties, regulators, analysts and even AI-driven trading algorithms across the globe.
In recent years, there’s been a pronounced global shift among large corporations toward the strategic exploration of monetisation opportunities, both direct and indirect, from the vast information they collect and generate – be it inventory levels from supply chains, sales patterns from retail stores or consumer behaviour trends from online platforms.
This trend has increasingly permeated the investment landscape, giving rise to what is now commonly referred to as ‘alternative data’ or ‘alt data’. While conventional investment strategies have historically relied on well-established financial metrics, the modern investor is progressively seeking out non-traditional data sources to gain a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving market environment.
Investors now draw insights from highly differentiated sources – whether it’s satellite imagery capturing agricultural yields, shipping records tracking global trade flows or foot traffic analytics from retail spaces. These data points offer a granular, real-time view of economic activity, providing signals well in advance of traditional financial indicators.
For businesses, particularly those considering capital raising or seeking to engage with investors, this evolution in data utilisation presents a significant and largely untapped opportunity. Organisations can ethically curate and package this information into actionable insights and the revenue potential from selling these alternative data streams should not be underestimated.
However, turning fragmented datasets into a coherent, reliable system presents a significant challenge for many businesses. For companies looking to unlock the full revenue potential of their data, platforms with the infrastructure to centralise, sort, filter and distribute data efficiently – like stock exchanges – offer an ideal solution.
African stock exchanges are evolving into digital marketplaces for data, facilitating the centralisation, standardisation and distribution of diverse data assets. By leveraging data held by listed companies and connecting it with a wide range of market participants – including asset managers, institutional investors and an expanding base of retail investors – exchanges are enhancing the overall investment ecosystem.
By reducing the friction between data availability and its effective utilisation, exchanges help shorten the time to market for new data products, ensuring that the data is sanitised, reliable and actionable. Critical questions around data usage – such as redistribution rights, the number of authorised users and retention periods – are resolved through this approach, minimising legal and financial risks for data consumers.
From the data provider’s perspective, the benefits are equally compelling. One of the primary challenges corporations face is reaching potential clients and managing the complexities of legal agreements, licensing structures and negotiations with multiple asset managers or other buyers.
Currently, many data providers engage in labour-intensive negotiations for master service agreements (MSAs), determining how their data can be distributed or resold. This process not only consumes valuable time but also limits their ability to scale data offerings efficiently.
Stock exchanges can alleviate much of this burden.
By offering a technology platform that handles data quality assurance, distribution, contract management, and client engagement, exchanges enable data owners to focus on their core competencies – data creation and maintenance.
In this way, the exchange functions as a central marketplace not only for securities but also for data. It provides data owners with access to a broad and growing client base, eliminates the need for bespoke agreements with each consumer, and ensures that all legal, commercial, and licensing concerns are managed centrally. This model enables data providers to monetise their assets more effectively, while consumers benefit from simplified access to high-quality, standardised data that meets their analytical needs.
As an example, the JSE recently announced a strategic collaboration with DataBP to launch a cloud Marketplace. This new digital Marketplace will serve as the central hub for all JSE data products and services.
The bourse has digitised client contracting for index agreements and introduced Trade Explorer for member analytics services. With its core data now cloud-hosted, the JSE is gearing up to launch a virtual storefront that allows clients to easily purchase data online. The Marketplace will enable customers and redistributors to access a wide range of products efficiently and will host third-party content and analytics services, enhancing the value of the JSE’s proprietary data and expanding the distribution capabilities of the cloud marketplace.
The evolution of data from an internal asset to a traded commodity reflects a broader shift in the way businesses and markets operate. For companies prepared to embrace this new paradigm, the opportunities are vast, not just for immediate revenue generation but for long-term strategic advantage in a rapidly changing economic landscape.