Founder and CEO Bernie Thurston and SIX CEO Bjørn Sibbern on a decade of growth, five years inside SIX, and where ETF and index data goes next
A decade of building ETF and index data infrastructure
Ultumus is a specialist ETF and index data provider that consolidates index and ETF data, calculates Portfolio Composition Files (PCFs), and powers the create and redeem workflows behind ETF trading.
This October marks ten years since Ultumus was founded, and five years since it became part of SIX. To mark both, founder and CEO Bernie Thurston sat down in London with Bjørn Sibbern, CEO of SIX, to look at how the business grew and where it goes next.
Watch the full conversation below:
From index data to ETF infrastructure
Most of the market knows Ultumus for ETFs: the ETF data, the PCF calculation, the creation and redemption platform. Fewer know it started in index data, and that index processing remains the foundation everything else is built on.
“We are the SMEs of the index and ETF space," Thurston says in the interview — subject matter experts engaging with ETF providers, index providers, and the clients of both.
Unlike generalist data vendors, Ultumus was built from the ground up for the index and ETF ecosystem. That focus is what allowed the products to move from feeds into applications: three data products at the point of acquisition have become six, with a seventh in build, and clients now use them as part of their day-by-day operational process rather than as a reference source alongside it.
Why ETF data has to work across every time zone
The shift Thurston describes is geographic as much as technical. ETFs are no longer traded in a single time zone; desks hedge into the next one as it opens.
“We don't regard our client base as being Hong Kong, London, or North America," he says. “They are coming to us so that we can have a consistent view across that whole process."
That means the same set of data driving every process, wherever the book sits — supported by 24/5 operational cover and files delivered ahead of market open in each region.
What Ultumus adds to SIX
For Sibbern, the fit is about extending what SIX already does well.
“We are good at trading, we are good at post-trade, we are good at data, we are good at index," he says. “What Ultumus brings is extending our core value chain, and also being embedded as a part of the workflow at the customer level." The second part, he adds, is reach: taking the ETF franchise into the global scene rather than a single region.
Ten years in, the direction of travel is the same one that started the business: making index and ETF data usable, and putting it where the work actually happens.
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