Thomson Reuters today announces a partnership with Crowdnetic that will increase financial professionals’ access to information about the global crowdfunding market. The goal is to improve transparency and create new opportunities for innovation in an industry that has matured in recent years, requiring a more substantial information infrastructure of the kind Thomson Reuters is perfectly suited to provide.

Crowdnetic provides technology, real-time data and research to the global marketplace-lending and crowdfunded-startup industries. It has adopted Thomson Reuters Permanent Identifier (PermID) as its primary symbology system for the recording and tracking of crowdfunding transactions. The move brings investors more insight into the dynamics of this fast-growing investment area.

Thomson Reuters PermID is a machine-readable identifier developed to create a unique reference for any data item. Unlike stock tickers and other such symbols, the PermID never changes. This makes it invaluable for managing data in rapidly growing sectors such as crowdfunding, where early-stage entities and unlisted securities are often poorly described, making them difficult to track over the long haul.  PermID was developed by Thomson Reuters to manage its own internal datasets and is now being made available more widely to help solve the big data challenges faced by multiple industries.

As part of the collaboration with Thomson Reuters, Crowdnetic’s company and investment data will be made available on Thomson Reuters Eikon, the company’s flagship desktop for financial markets professionals. The partnership will offer Eikon users greater access to data about crowdfunded companies along with powerful analytics tools. Users will better understand this increasingly important market and improve their ability to make informed investment and advisory decisions.

“Recent regulatory changes, including passage of the JOBS Act in the U.S., have been a catalyst for the development of crowdfunding as a serious way for companies to raise funding,” said Debra Walton, chief content officer, Financial & Risk, Thomson Reuters. “The resulting surge in unlisted securities poses significant challenges to investors and regulators seeking to track deals and build an efficient primary market. With the data management and analysis provided by PermID and Thomson Reuters Eikon, we can help financial professionals gain a comprehensive view of the crowdfunding market.”

“Crowdfunding offers huge potential to both early-stage companies and investors, but this potential can only be fully realized through the creation of an efficient, transparent, and orderly marketplace,” said Luan Cox, president and chief executive officer, Crowdnetic. “We aim to help achieve this by providing education and transparency to the industry. With PermID and other data-management and analysis tools in Eikon in the equation, Thomson Reuters will play a key role in helping the industry develop.”