The number of market data terminals used across the capital markets could be set to rise after Bloomberg’s decision to halt a remote access policy to its Bloomberg Professional terminal that the vendor implemented at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

For shared terminals—i.e., terminals placed in an open setting within user firms for use by multiple individuals, one at a time—Bloomberg has a disaster recovery (DR) provision that allows remote access in the event of an emergency that prevents staff from being able to access their office and any physical terminals located there. During the Covid-19 outbreak, the vendor triggered this provision to enable clients who suddenly found themselves forced to work from home to access their shared Bloombergs.

These individuals are typically in middle- and back-office roles, who may occasionally need to access pricing or reference data. Front-office Bloomberg users with individual licenses were already able to access their terminals from home using Bloomberg Anywhere.

However, as the dire emergency phase of the pandemic passed, and as financial firms began to return to working in offices again, Bloomberg decided that the DR access was no longer warranted—though it continues to offer the program in case of other emergencies—and began warning that it would shut off remote access under the provision, and that users who wanted to continue having full remote access to a Bloomberg terminal would need to upgrade to Bloomberg Anywhere or lose access outside of their office locations. The program ended on July 1, though firms that were interested in upgrading could sign up for free trials of Bloomberg Anywhere. These trials end November 1.

“More often than not, traders are already Bloomberg Anywhere users and have their own setups at home,” says Mark Flatman, head of core product at Bloomberg. “This lack of access to office-based workstations affected those more in the back office who are less familiar with Bloomberg terminals.”

Some cynics say the move is simply a way to sell more terminals, by converting some of the large number of shared terminals used throughout the industry into even larger numbers of individual subscriptions. One data manager, for example, says a handful of managing director-level executives signed off for a few staff to upgrade, but notes that the industry is still largely trying to reduce market data costs.

But, it’s also important to note, Bloomberg isn’t necessarily forcing an upsell; users can continue to have exactly the same access as pre-pandemic in their offices. Only those who want to keep access from remote locations—which is what Bloomberg Anywhere was designed for—need to change their subscriptions. And most sources spoken to by WatersTechnology expressed gratitude for the lengthy remote access and say the vendor performed in an exemplary manner to get all users provisioned when the pandemic first hit.

One major fund services and technology provider, for example, uses Bloomberg extensively for pricing in its fund services business. “We all have to be very grateful that they did what they did with the DR service. Within a few days, we had all our users globally up and running while our offices were closed,” says an executive at the provider.

Indeed, Bloomberg went beyond just making access available, and accelerated some developments to make it easier for users to access their terminals without needing the multi-screen setup often seen on trading desks—for example, by users who may only use a laptop or a couple of monitors.

Additionally, shortly after March 2020, the vendor introduced a tabbed screen environment to make it easier for users to access the screens they needed in a more familiar, web browser-like environment. To help users make sense of the surge in data volumes experienced early during the pandemic, Bloomberg introduced summarization engines that condensed multiple instances of the same news story into a single headline, and created “Quick Read” news summaries. It also re-rendered some displays to make them easier to view on mobile devices, and to help users manage the surge in communications activity over its Instant Bloomberg messaging platform, the vendor accelerated the rollout of new developments to make it easier to tag and share content from messages.

The vendor also conducted extensive one-on-one outreach with clients, and introduced a series of screen optimization tools and on-screen prompts to help users navigate to data more easily, while optimizing on-screen real estate. And more recently, Bloomberg has been extending its natural-language processing capabilities with a service called Document Search that makes it easier for users to search and identify related content by creating links between content in their terminal—from news stories to in-house or broker research, content from their Instant Bloomberg chats, or notes that users make on data in the terminal.

Flatman declines to speculate about how many new terminal sales could result from the policy change but is confident that more remote users will want full terminal access. “All the things we’ve added will hopefully make it more appealing to take the Terminal,” he says.

The fund services vendor executive expects to see a raft of new subscribers to Bloomberg Anywhere. “For example, we have thousands of people in funds services, and many of them use Bloomberg terminals. But we’re not going to pay for everyone to have a Bloomberg. So, we’ll keep some at the office, and pay for some individuals to have access at home for mission-critical services, but for others, we’re teaching them to use our internal market data platform, where they can access Bloomberg data via Bloomberg Data License,” he says.

This provider’s internal data platform is its source of market data, reference data, security master data, ratings, and other information. Recently, in anticipation of former terminal users now sourcing Bloomberg data via its internal platform, the provider enhanced the platform and—after surveying staff about their usage—wrote a manual that explains how to access the same data via the platform that they would have previously accessed via the Bloomberg terminal.

A rising tide lifts all boats

However, other terminal providers are feeling buoyed by the change, and believe that users who have become accustomed to having terminal access at home, and whose firms plan to continue supporting a hybrid working environment, will continue wanting access to data remotely—and if their budget doesn’t support a Bloomberg terminal, they may seek out cheaper alternatives, leading to an overall rise in terminal numbers across the industry.

Steven Orr, chief strategy officer at low-cost institutional and retail terminal provider Money.net, says that from the moment Bloomberg announced it was ending the DR-based access, the vendor has seen an uptick in traffic to its website, people taking out new trials, and phone calls inquiring about its product.

Under its previous ownership, Money.net infamously tried to position itself as a Bloomberg-killer. The new management team’s ambitions are more realistic.

“We’re not going after Bloomberg. But when you have a team of 12 people and only one Bloomberg terminal, and you give them a taste of massive amounts of institutional data, of course they’re going to want that. And people who don’t usually have access to that are going to want it—and yeah, they’re going to be looking for alternatives,” Orr says.

The CEO of another low-cost terminal provider that is also targeting non-trading floor users reports “a significant pickup in usage and trials” over recent months but is hesitant to attribute that to the Bloomberg policy change, suggesting that he expects to see an uptick in terminal numbers because “remote working is here to stay,” and he expects firms to be even more cost conscious in the future.

Robert Iati, managing director at Burton-Taylor International Consulting, which produces market share reports for the data industry and others, doesn’t expect the change to produce wild swings in terminal count, and anticipates flat growth leading to declining numbers in the longer term.

“The pandemic and post-pandemic environments have created a need for more terminals—or virtual terminals—because when there are two terminals on a floor of 100 people who are suddenly working from home, they need access to workstations. But a combination of people going back to work, and the long-term trend of people using more mobile solutions may lead to declines overall,” Iati says.

Unlike previous years, Burton-Taylor did not release a market report for data desktops this year, but Iati estimates there were around 1.8 million financial data terminals in use last year, up from between 1.5 and 1.6 million five years ago, Of these, he estimates Bloomberg accounted for around 334,000 terminals, up from around 330,000 the previous year. Overall, he says, this indicates that—despite the bumps created by the pandemic and Bloomberg’s policy change—growth of data terminals is slowing and is set to start declining over the long term.

However, Iati says that “long term” could be very long, and that terminals still have a long life ahead.

“The physical desktop will remain for as long as people remain in the office,” he says. “But I wonder how the next generation will adapt, because they don’t want to use ‘old’ screens, and they don’t want to work in an office.”

Meanwhile, members of the current generation who may not wish to return to an office setting—at least full time—will still need remote access to data services. And while Bloomberg Anywhere might be their preferred choice, if their budget doesn’t allow it, then smaller, cheaper providers could be the ones in for a windfall.