Thomson Reuters has been recognized by CIOReview Magazine as the recipient of “Top 20 Capital Markets Technology Solution Companies - 2016,” based on our proprietary methodology, reflecting its position in the industry. This profile has been developed by the CIOReview research and editorial team based on insights from an interview with Debra Walton, Chief Product & Content Officer.

Thomson Reuters
Powering Financial Analysis

Debra Walton, Chief Product & Content Officer

Technology has irrevocably changed the way just about every business operates. Nothing remains stable for long—new companies that disrupt may eventually find themselves the target of disruption, so there’s no room for complacency. In particular, the financial services sector faces a myriad of challenges that are far different from those of even 20 years ago. Foremost among them are the global regulations put in place after the financial crisis. But the growth of big data, digital currency such as bitcoin, high-speed trading and the rise of the algorithm, peer-to-peer lending, and innovations in fintech are among other tectonic shifts in the industry. “Today, the firms that don’t carefully and strategically map the future may soon be lagging their rivals, or be forced out of the game entirely,” says Debra Walton, Chief Product and Content Officer of Thomson Reuters Financial & Risk. “That’s where we come in. Thomson Reuters is perfectly suited to help clients across the financial services spectrum keep their businesses running at peak levels.” At the core, Thomson Reuters is an information company. “We were delivering financial news even in the age of the carrier pigeon. We have now gone far beyond news and offer a vast array of data to clients, along with the tools for them to manage and benefit from it.”

A good example is the firm’s Permanent Identifier (PermID), a unique, permanent, machine-readable number that allows data to be mapped, linked, and understood. “We’re also embracing an open data model as the best approach for today’s markets,” adds Debra. The age of data walled off in silos is coming to an end. Related to this strategy is the expansion of Thomson Reuters partnership program that brings third-party offerings to their platform.This gives their clients access to a much wider range of tools with Thomson Reuters collaborating with innovate companies.

It’s all part of staying engaged with and relevant to the capital markets industry

Thomson Reuters Eikon offers clients financial content, from streaming real-time data to deep historical information, giving access to trusted, timely, and accurate content from more than 400 exchanges and OTC-traded markets and over 70 direct exchange feeds. Eikon also allows third-party firms and clients to develop apps that are deployed on Thomson Reuters platform. These apps can be for an Eikon user’s internal use only, or accessible to all Eikon users, and in many cases, these apps complement and enhance Eikon’s already robust suite of products. For example, OTAS Technologies recently brought its market intelligence and analytics offering to Eikon, providing users with immediate access to its tools for supporting trading, risk, and portfolio management. Another third-party app, ChartIQ, offers traders a complete technical analysis toolkit.

The company stands out from the competition in a number of ways because of the extent of their data offerings and ability to help clients leverage it to the fullest. “We try to maintain the kind of entrepreneurial mindset that drives Silicon Valley. Our innovation labs in the U.S. and around the world are working to find the next big thing,” explains Debra. As ‘the answer company,’ they seek to solve global challenges and promote academic research in partnerships with the top universities. The staff in Thomson Reuters labs works on a variety of projects covering everything from data science to dashboards, analytics to proof-of-concept applications. “It’s all part of staying engaged with and relevant to the capital markets industry,” she concludes

Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters Completes Acquisition of SurePrep, LLC

Friday, March 10, 2023

TORONTO - Thomson Reuters Corporation announced today it has closed on its previously announced acquisition of SurePrep, LLC ("SurePrep"), a US-based leader in 1040 tax automation software and services. On November 11, 2022, Thomson Reuters announced that it had reached a definitive agreement to acquire SurePrep for $500 million in cash.

SurePrep is a California-based company that helps accounting firms increase productivity and profitability. With a consumer-grade mobile friendly design, SurePrep leverages artificial intelligence to automate the collection of digital documents directly from clients and the processing of those documents. Its products and solutions, including 1040SCAN, SPbinder and TaxCaddy, are used by over 23,000 tax professionals at CPA firms, wealth management firms and others.

The acquisition supports Thomson Reuters' strategy of pursuing both organic and inorganic growth opportunities as it promotes seamless, cloud-based workflows for professionals through innovative digital solutions and open, smart, and connected platforms.

SurePrep will become part of Tax and Accounting Professionals operations, with revenues in both Tax & Accounting Professionals and Corporates. Thomson Reuters welcomes David Wyle and SurePrep colleagues to the team, ensuring continuity for customers, partners and employees as they continue to offer SurePrep as a market solution.

"We are wholly focused on helping tax professionals be more productive by providing them with the tools they need for success," said Elizabeth Beastrom, President of Tax & Accounting Professionals at Thomson Reuters. "SurePrep helps customers save both time and costs as they face difficult economic conditions, as well as greater legislative complexity. We are eager to unlock SurePrep's true potential across our Tax and Accounting customers as we provide an open, integrated platform. Thomson Reuters will continue existing product integrations, with plans to develop further support for a connected tax ecosystem."

As previously disclosed in the November 11, 2022 news release, SurePrep is expected to generate approximately $60 million of revenue in 2022 and grow in excess of 20% annually in the next few years. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be neutral in the first year, followed by annual increases thereafter, as integration costs subside and revenue scales. Acquired deferred revenue is expected to be a modest free cash flow drag in the first year.

Thomson Reuters Launches Generative AI-Powered Solutions to Transform How Legal Professionals Work

Thursday, November 30, 2023

NEW YORK - Thomson Reuters announced a series of GenAI initiatives designed to transform the legal profession. Headlining these initiatives is the debut of GenAI within the most advanced legal research platform, AI-Assisted Research on Westlaw Precision. Available now to customers in the United States, this skill helps legal professionals quickly get to answers for complex research questions. This generative AI skill leverages innovation in Casetext and taking a “best of” approach was created using the Thomson Reuters Generative AI Platform.

The company also announced that it will be building on the AI assistant experience Casetext created with CoCounsel, the world's first AI legal assistant. Later in 2024, Thomson Reuters will launch an AI assistant that will be the interface across Thomson Reuters products with GenAI capabilities.

The AI assistant, called CoCounsel, will be fully integrated with multiple Thomson Reuters legal products, including Westlaw Precision, Practical Law Dynamic Tool Set, Document Intelligence, and HighQ, and will continue to be available on the CoCounsel application as a destination site. Customers will be able to choose the right skills to solve the problem at hand while taking advantage of generative AI capabilities.

“Thomson Reuters is redefining the way legal work is done by delivering a generative AI-based toolkit to enable attorneys to quickly gather deeper insights and deliver a better work product. AI-Assisted Research on Westlaw Precision and CoCounsel Core provide the most comprehensive set of generative AI skills that attorneys can use across their research and workflow,” said David Wong, chief product officer, Thomson Reuters.

With AI-Assisted Research and CoCounsel Core, attorneys are empowered with eight GenAI-powered core skills, including AI-Assisted Research on Westlaw Precision, Prepare for a Deposition, Draft Correspondence, Search a Database, Review Documents, Summarize a Document, Extract Contract Data, and Contract Policy Compliance. The company also laid out high-level product roadmaps to develop numerous additional GenAI skills to address customer-specific needs. Each additional skill will be built on a common software framework within the Thomson Reuters Generative AI Platform.

AI-Assisted Research allows customers to ask complex legal research questions in natural language and quickly receive synthesized answers, with links to supporting authority from Westlaw content and links to further examine that authority. AI-Assisted Research streamlines the initial phase of legal research with sophisticated answers to questions and the authority those answers are based on, saving hours of work. These responses are founded on more than 150 years of Thomson Reuters classification, analysis, and editorial expertise contributed by subject matter experts and attorney editors. AI-Assisted Research employs Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to prevent the large language models (LLMs) from making up things like case names and citations by focusing the LLMs on the actual language of Westlaw content. Future plans include expanding GenAI throughout the research process in Westlaw and bringing these capabilities to versions of Westlaw outside the US. Starting in 2024, target markets include the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

“Thomson Reuters is well positioned to deliver high-quality AI results because it has the largest, most up-to-date, and trustworthy legal research system in the world,” said Andrew Bedigian, counsel, Larson LLP. “The fact that AI-Assisted Research relies exclusively on Thomson Reuters vetted database should provide lawyers with confidence that the answer AI-Assisted Research is generating in response to attorney questions is going to be well supported. And the fact that AI-Assisted Research delivers all the sources it relied upon – right beneath the answer – provides additional confidence that the program is delivering on our research needs.”

“We leveraged our experts in Thomson Reuters Labs, our more than 1,600 attorneys, and our best-in-class content to build a Westlaw Precision tool that provides our customers with the trust, accuracy, and speed they need to serve their clients,” said Mike Dahn, head of Westlaw Product Management, Thomson Reuters. “Our human oversight, technology expertise, and industry-leading content are critical to producing trusted answers with generative AI. This tool won’t obviate the need for attorneys, but it will help them do their work better and faster.”

CoCounsel Core

With integration well under way, the company today announced CoCounsel Core as the commercial offering of legacy CoCounsel skills. CoCounsel has had more than 4,000 hours of rigorous testing and training by more than 1,400 customers since its launch in May – including input of law firms, corporations, and government agencies. All of this learning is being utilized in the Thomson Reuters innovation journey.

Thomson Reuters Generative AI Platform

The Thomson Reuters Generative AI platform is a cloud native technology platform that uses an API-first development approach and incorporates Thomson Reuters user experience and design systems. It will enable Thomson Reuters to quickly and easily launch new generative AI skills by leveraging reusable components as the building blocks for future products. The Thomson Reuters Generative AI platform will provide a safe, privacy-compliant, and reliable platform for generative AI development, enabling scalability across a wide range of LLM providers.

Thomson Reuters will continue to bring GenAI to more aspects of the legal research process with the introduction of GenAI within Practical Law Dynamic Tool Set in January 2024. Customers will benefit from generative AI within Practical Law through a new interface with an AI legal assistant, which will quickly provide answers using conversational language – all validated by trusted Practical Law content created and maintained by a team of more than 650 legal experts.

Thomson Reuters is committed to ensuring that its AI products and skills are built responsibly. To review the guidelines used to ensure that Thomson Reuters solutions are secure, trusted, and reliable, see the company’s AI principles.

Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters (NYSE / TSX: TRI) (“TR”) informs the way forward by bringing together the trusted content and technology that people and organizations need to make the right decisions. The company serves professionals across legal, tax, accounting, compliance, government, and media. Its products combine highly specialized software and insights to empower professionals with the data, intelligence, and solutions needed to make informed decisions, and to help institutions in their pursuit of justice, truth, and transparency. Reuters, part of Thomson Reuters, is a world leading provider of trusted journalism and news. For more information, visit tr.com.

Top 20 Capital Markets Technology Solution Companies - 2016

Company
Thomson Reuters

Management
Debra Walton, Chief Product & Content Officer

Description
Provides analytical tools and in-depth financial information to better advise clients and prospects on mergers and acquisitions, corporate strategy and structure

Thomson Reuters Powering Financial Analysis