Airex Market’s vision is to become the Amazon of financial information (data, research, apps and APIs). A NY based virtual company that wants to commoditize some of these products, reduce costs for other products and services consumed by institutional users, but most importantly aims to provide a platform for Discovering information from the plethora that already exists.
Looking for apps on your smartphone that send short selling trend alerts; or smart stops based on real time risk mgt; or a la carte fundamental research; actionable trade ideas in specific asset classes? Are you a small-medium size financial professional that consumes only part of the research acquired and is always looking for additional valuable info and tools? Are you a larger financial player that could benefit by reducing “waste” in partially valuable financial tools and could use some help on being compliant with the new regulations on accounting for research costs?
Airex Market is looking to address such pain points of “consumers” of financial information. They are also disrupting the old selling model of the Romans: “selling oil to only large customers that they connect in person”. They offer a very easy onboarding process for vendors of financial information services. They are putting emphasis on the search process so that it facilitates the “buyers” of such products and services in finding what they want and need and what they don’t know exists.
They already have some distribution partnerships with NASDAQ, Fact Research, and Morningstar. With regards to the giants in the space, Bloomberg and Thomson, AirexMakret counts on the fact that such services are too costly for medium to small size institutions and typically can’t be unbundled. They are targeting registered investment advisors, asset managers, wealth advisors, hedge funds, private equity managers and individual investors. They can offer them targeted unbundled research products, instead of annual subscription packages. Also, they can offer ‘hot off the press” macro research that traditionally has been offered in a much delayed fashion.
Airexmarket claims that “Buyers can instantly discover and purchase new products” on their platform that showcase multiple marketplaces and a friendly search procedure. In addition, they have unbundled many of the products and services and showcase them in “smaller denominations” that weren’t available before. Buyers can buy only a specific report or choose the subscription period. They can also buy a la carte the info and research needed instead of larger package (e.g. only Mexican macro research instead of all Latin American; only automotive sector research instead of all transportation sector).
On the other end, the vendors, can access new markets that they may not have been able to cost-effectively reach with their existing direct sales forces, at little or no risk. Vendors decide their pricing policy and Airexmakret has become a marketplace creator for them. The pivoting of their business model from simply a distributor of financial info and apps to becoming a marketplace creator is implemented through their newly launched program AMP (Airex Market Partner (AMP) Program). AMP partners are sellers that use the service for free and determine prices of their products showcased. Partners that have joined already the program include, Informed Technical Investor (Market Analysis and Trade Ideas for Options Traders and Investors); Marco Polo New World (global trading for brokers and institutions, mainly focused in EM); Wright Investors’ Service (international fundamental investment research and investment management firm); Sage Data Service (provider of financial data and tools that leverages XBRL technology); Edison Group ( provider of fundamental analyses of businesses – models, strategy, financial forecasts, etc); TheySay (provider of sentiment analysis, focusing on news and social media); PureGroup (provider of analytics for asset and wealth mgt).
Airexmarket, the marketplace creator, is already showcasing thousands of individually purchasable products. It takes a cut in every transaction on its platform, basically, monetizing web traffic and sharing revenue with their partners. Buyers of research through Airexmakret can also count on tackling the complex compliance issues around accounting for research costs inherent in MFID II and ESMA.
Scalability is the name of the game at this stage for Airex Market. It can happen by unlocking value with a “smart” UX for the buyers of the products showcased by sellers and partners. Buyers will come back if they “find valuable info and tools that they didn’t know about” and “if the a la carte capability of unbundled services and products, affects their bottom line”. Sellers will look to onboard and stay on, if they find new clients to sell.