Global investment diversification and private asset investment expansion have caused business units to establish specialized blended benchmarks to adequately bring clarity to the value they are creating on the world stage and enhance their attractiveness to investors. This accelerated demand from business units for additional benchmark data, historical repositories and platforms to store and calculate returns have put pressure on buy-side infrastructure traditionally focused on exchanged traded instruments in local markets.
The breadth and depth of data buy-side firms are demanding and consuming is higher than it has ever been and the need to plug n’ play new sources of data has become critical to many analytics groups. In the early days of what if analytics, portfolio managers would entertain adding, deleting or changing individual securities in an asset mix. In 2025, we are seeing specialized teams looking to do what if analytics with entire indices for performance benchmarks on a go forward and historical basis. This is the new breed of firms looking to increase their ROR and portfolio holdings fine tuning to create stronger rates of return. Increased ROR is demanded by marketers for structured product offerings, firms striving to meet ALM obligations and portfolio managers whose incentive compensation is driven by returns.
In the data business since 1996, clients turn to Rimes for several aspects of managing data and data management needs to optimize this space:
- As a blended benchmark specialist, Rimes construct over 4,000+ daily for its client base globally. In many jurisdictions it is mandatory to have a third-party construct custom benchmarks, in other jurisdictions firms retain Rimes to execute blended benchmarks for them to be more cost effective and/or to proof arms-length neutrality in constructing custom measures.
- With over 800+ data vendors under its services, clients turn to Rimes for agile plug n’ play quality data sources, especially at the index and constituent level for benchmarks. This includes a growing demand for benchmark history at the index and constituent level as well as ETF data (Rimes support approximately 16,000+ ETFs globally) that firms are looking to ingest for use in their analytics environments.
- Many firms have engaged with us for our data lakehouse to ingest the quality data we deliver to them – recently clients are also looking to engage Rimes in delivery of ID matching of data to ensure the beginning of day sets of data are matched and aligned before resources start their working day. Given Rimes global offices that follow the sun for data availability and changes, it ensures clients – regardless of jurisdiction – arrive at their beginning of day with the cleanest sets of 3rd-party data available.
- With specialized data sources and platform for ESG with cloud-based access, clients are reaching out to Rimes for assistance in adhering to ESG polices and procedures in addition to sourcing broad sets of ESG data to look for optimal returns while adhering to ESG policy needs.
- As new asset classes, marketplaces and benchmarks are required for ingestion, clients turn to Rimes and Rimes is continually expanding its capabilities to allow buy-side firms to rely on managing these emerging business areas with more confidence in data, platforms and operational efficiencies.
