Microsoft and Refinitiv have formed a new strategic partnership, using the Azure cloud to create new products and services, as well as expanding its use of Microsoft 365 and Teams.

Refinitiv provides over 40,000 financial institutions in 190 countries with data and analysis tools. Chief executive David Craig explained: “Microsoft’s scale and its integrated product suite provides important opportunities for customers to connect and collaborate.

"We see huge benefits in working with Microsoft and its productivity tools to improve efficiency, collaboration and communication across the financial community, especially as our customers harness automation and reimagine the future of work in a digital, post-COVID environment.”

Refinitiv distributes 55 billion updates on financial markets every day, and up to 176 billion market messages per day through the crisis, from approximately 150,000 data sources and holds information on 68,000 public companies.

It has two petabytes of pricing data stretching back over 20 years, as well as 60 petabytes of data that customers use to inform their decision making. In 2018, Refinitiv launched QA Direct in the Cloud, to help investment managers rapidly surface insight from a range of Refinitiv’s global market and referential data hosted in Azure.

A statement suggested that this fits with Refinitiv’s recent investment in and strategic partnership with ModuleQ, a Microsoft partner that delivers AI-driven market updates to professionals directly within Teams.

“We have seen companies increasingly use our messaging services, as effective collaboration has been so important through the crisis,” said Ben Shepherd, Refinitiv's chief strategy and innovation officer.

“When you add tools within that collaboration platform to help people surface information quickly, you create a seamless experience that brings the best of technology and data together with the human expertise needed to move markets forward - to date, financial services has had too few sophisticated channels for collaboration.”

Microsoft stated that this partnership is a demonstration of its commitment to the financial services sector.

Cindy Rose, the outgoing chief executive of Microsoft UK, said: “Through the powerful combination of our shared skills, experience and technology, we can help organisations unlock valuable insights from their data and spark a new level of productivity, collaboration and communication.”

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