OTC
Valuations Limited (OTC Val), a leading provider of independent
valuation and transparency reports for structured products and OTC
derivatives, is pleased to announce it has further increased its
valuation capabilities of illiquid securities, outlined below.
VALUATION REQUIREMENTS Many
mortgage‐backed securities, commercial paper, corporate debt,
collateralized debt obligations, and other asset‐backed products have
attained illiquid status. Holders can no longer rely on broker quotes
because the quotes have become stale, or otherwise fail to satisfy the
level of price transparency required for financial and risk reporting
purposes. OTC Val addresses these data issues through its transparent
valuation service that is based on proven fair value estimation and
model‐based techniques. Current clients use the service to satisfy
audit and internal risk compliance requirements for securities with no
direct market observable prices.
METHODOLOGY OVERVIEW Market
participants are increasingly concerned about the assumptions and data
behind a product’s ... more»
Markit,
a financial information services company, today announced the launch of
the first multi-bank, cross-asset client valuations platform. The
initiative was first announced in February last year.
Markit
Valuations Manager provides a secure, standardised view of
over-the-counter (OTC) derivative positions and derivative and cash
instrument valuations across counterparties on a single electronic
platform. Subscribers to Markit's Portfolio Valuations service will be
able to view the bank counterparty valuations alongside Markit's
independent valuations.
Currently, portfolio managers receive
numerous statements from their counterparties in multiple formats,
requiring many hours of manual consolidation. A recent survey of 50
asset managers conducted by Markit highlights the urgent need for an
electronic, secure valuations process:
- 17% of respondents said
that a single file delivery of counterparty statements would save them
between 50 and 1,000 hours of work a month. On average, respondents
estimated time savings of more than 49 ... more»
Markit,
a financial information services company, and RiskVal Financial
Solutions, a provider of fixed-income trading and risk management
systems, today announced the integration of Markit’s industry standard
pricing and reference data into RiskVal’s Credit-X trading platform.
The
Credit-X trading platform has integrated a broad array of Markit’s
products and services, including Markit RED [1] for CDS and LCDS;
Markit Quotes [2], Markit Intraday [3]; Markit Indices [4]; and
Markit’s CDS and LCDS spread services [5].
Markit is a
financial information services company that offers independent pricing,
valuations and trade processing services to help market participants
manage risk, improve operational efficiency and meet regulatory
requirements. Markit's alliance with RiskVal has created a trading
platform that delivers improved risk analysis tools including real time
profit and loss management, more accurate data entry and superior
credit event management. Credit-X is available as a remotely managed
Software as ... more»
The following article was written by my colleague Julian Manfredi and is also published in the Winter edition of ISC's newsletter
To what extent is Central Counter Party a positive development
for Investment Managers?
The 1st century B.C. Roman lawyer, orator and senator
Marcus Tullius Cicero famously coined the phrase “cui bono” meaning “to what
good”[1]
applying it as a maxim during several celebrated legal cases as he sought
transparency and clarity of purpose and outcome.2000 years later, as we face clarion calls
for a move to the Central Counterparty Clearing model for OTC derivatives, it
is time to apply the axiom afresh with respect to the investment management
community
CheckFree,
now part of Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ: FISV), a leading provider of
information technology services to the financial industry, today
announced that a leading European asset manager has gone live with its
post-trade processing solution, CheckFree TradeFlow, for OTC
Derivatives. The implementation extends the existing CheckFree
TradeFlow deployment for securities, foreign exchange and money
markets, enabling the firm to create a single, integrated, post-trade
processing platform across all asset classes.
Deployed at
its corporate headquarters, the CheckFree TradeFlow solution for OTC
Derivatives is being implemented by the asset manager in two key
phases. The first phase, now live, delivers confirmation processing and
advanced exceptions handling for credit derivatives trades through DTCC
Deriv/SERV. Phase two is designed to implement a complete post-trade
event management solution and support for additional business
processes, including terminations, assignments, increases and
amendments. The asset manager has worked in close cooperation with
... more»
