Investment firms typically pay recurring fees to large research shops for regular reports on stocks, but the market is fragmenting as smaller specialist outfits emerge to focus on niche industries.

The research acquisition model is also being shaken up by new regulations, with the UK's Financial Conduct Authority last year introducing rules that say research must be priced, its use must be justified and an audit trail must be in place to administrate the accountability process. Additional rules from Europe are also in the pipeline as part of MiFID II.

Launching in Hong Kong, Seed Alpha claims that it will help address both of these issues by providing buy-side firms with a space to manage their research while delivering them content from providers in an iTunes' style format. The cloud-based platform provides a transparent audit trail showing who is using the research and what was paid for it.

Users - who pay a flat annual fee - can buy research on a case-by-case basis, rather than agreeing to subscription arrangements and the system's algorithms also learn from behaviour and make recommendations on research and providers.

Andrew Ballingal, CEO of early adopter Ballingal Investment Advisers, says: "Seed Alpha gives us the ability to effortlessly manage the vast amounts of research we consume, while providing an audit trail for customers and regulators. We’ve seen increasing demand from our investors to know exactly what their money is paying for in terms of research and commissions and this is a great way to easily demonstrate that what we’re paying is adding value and alpha to their portfolios and investment process."

Seed Alpha is hoping to get 2000 research providers onboard by the second quarter of next year, arguing that they benefit from instant access to a universe of potential consumers who otherwise would have been time consuming and costly to reach.

Shan Han, co-founder, Seed Alpha, says: "Bringing sudden and full transparency to a previously opaque industry is going to be uncomfortable for some, no question about that. But what you’ll see as this kind of technology gains traction is a genuine change in favour of quality providers. If their research is good, the buy side will demand it. We want everyone to be talking about ‘best research’ and finding it through Seed Alpha."