The Research Entitlement Consortium (REC) is a body of industry institutions who have an interest in significantly improving the current research permissioning approach and believe that the answer lies in creating a standard way of effecting entitlements between vendors and brokers in line with best-practice.
REC was formed in November 2005 as a way to bring together brokers and vendors in a facilitated forum that would be neutral to any one firm or agenda. This association stemmed from discussions between sell-side and vendor firms over several years. Brokers and vendors recognised that implementing several different mechanisms for entitlements across the industry was inefficient and slow, did not give any of the players a competitive advantage, drove up administrative costs, and ultimately did not provide sufficient control over what content was delivered to the buy-side.
In response to these frustrations, REC was created to define the new standard and to support its implementation across participating vendor and broker firms. This support will be limited to technical guidance on the standard. REC will also certify and assure implementations against the standard by providing certificates of compliance that firms can display.