LONDON, UK – 12/11/2025 – (SeaPRwire) – As institutional investors intensify their demand for precision data over broad data exhaust, a new breed of alternative data providers is emerging—lean, vertically integrated, and purpose-built to collapse the traditional cost and complexity barriers that have dominated the space for a decade. Hermes Intelligence appears to be among the most notable challengers in this shift, and today the company was officially recognized for that role. Waters Technology has named Hermes Intelligence the “Best Alternative Data Provider to the Buy Side.”
The award underscores Hermes Intelligence’s attempt to upend the entrenched structure of alternative data procurement—one historically defined by all-or-nothing licensing, six-figure subscriptions, and datasets so broad that only narrow slices were usable.
Hermes Intelligence differentiates through a model oriented around customized intelligence delivery, real-time risk-aligned monitoring, proprietary dataset construction, and pay-as-you-go pricing. The company argues this more closely matches the direction buy-side data consumption is moving—towards specificity, exclusivity and dynamic context.
“Traditional data vendors force overconsumption—firms pay for huge datasets when they only need niche slices,” said Albion Begaj, Head of Operations at Hermes Intelligence. “Hermes’ model is the inverse—we define exact client requirements, build proprietary data around those requirements, and only deliver the intelligence that matters. This award acknowledges that the model has momentum.”
The firm claims particular customer demand across several well-known pain points: eliminating multi-year commitments, ensuring custom-built datasets for each client, simplifying integrations across existing infrastructure, and improving freshness and data ownership.
A key pillar is Hermes Intelligence’s vertical integration approach: the delivery of not just raw information, but a unified capability where intelligence gathering flows directly into active risk monitoring—providing immediate alerts when competitor dynamics, market conditions or regulatory actions intersect with live portfolio exposure.
The company notes this is “infrastructure for proprietary intelligence,” not merely a feed of alternative data. As buy-side firms pursue differentiation in their signals and analysis, this tighter alignment between intelligence, risk and direct action is expected to become a competitive priority.