One of the main objectives of Mifid II was to make investing fairer and more transparent, especially for individual investors. Part of this was an attempt to democratise access to financial market data by forcing the manufacturers and distributors of financial products to unbundle costs and reveal more information to the consumers of their products.

Yet since coming into force at the start of the year, regulators have allowed established data firms to limit the availability of what should be openly accessible trade data. For small businesses in the financial services and regtech space in particular, this creates barriers to entry and limits the scope to create new data products for the asset management industry. For consumers, these restrictions may ultimately impact the value of their pensions and other investments.