MOSL seeks wholesaler funding for central retail market data cleanse

MOSL is consulting until 7 December on developing a wholesaler-funded central service for improving core data items in CMOS, starting with those considered to be priorities. It hopes to include this cleansing service as part of its draft 2023-26 business plan, which will be published in January.

The £1m-a-year service will focus initially on market eligibility, premises accuracy and address accuracy data. MOSL summarised that poor data impacts trading parties’ time, resource and revenue, as well as outcomes for business customers and the environment.

A central approach to cleansing, MOSL said, will deliver data improvement more efficiently, cost-effectively and at a greater pace than if left for trading parties to action individually. It said a conservative estimate of annualised benefits would be in excess of £8m.

The consultation reasoned that a simple, wholesaler-led funding model is appropriate for the initial work, charged via higher market operator charges. It pointed out that the data items in question are wholesaler owned; and that existing data quality assessment work had revealed data quality issues to be widespread with limited variation in performance across wholesale regions. There would need to be a code change to allow costs to be levied on wholesalers only.