Securities lending consultants and data vendors ASTEC Consulting Group have upgraded their Lending Pit daily reporting service for institutions which loan and borrow portfolio securities.
ASTEC has now expanded its Lending Pit service to offer Level III securities lending market data, providing traders and programme managers with further information. ASTEC has also improved the functionality of Lending Pit to maintain its speed and ease of use.
New features of the Level III enhancement include:
* Separation of open loans from term loans and any trades done under exclusive arrangements;
* Side-by-side viewing of cash and non-cash loan data for a full view of the market;
* Flagging of dividend record dates for 17,000 global equities;
* Interactive charts with rollover capabilities for precise analysis;
* Improved trends analysis tool, with custom charting and export to Excel.
“The third generation of Lending Pit reflects ASTEC’s commitment to providing high quality information to opaque markets,” says Ed Blount, Executive Director. “Lending Pit raises the bar yet again for accurate and timely securities lending market colour.”
Tim D’Arcy, Managing Director, summarized the reasons for the data enhancements: “All loans are not created equal, so it is important to compare like with like when benchmarking your loans,” he says. “Level III detail allows traders to do that efficiently every day.”
A streamlined user experience was a chief objective during the Level III development process according to Aaron Gerdeman, Product Manager: “While exponentially increasing the level of information available at Lending Pit™, we also wanted to preserve its user-friendliness,” he says. “It was a tall order but we succeeded in improving, not just preserving, its functionality and speed.”
Lending Pit is an online tool for securities lending traders and managers that uses ASTEC’s daily transaction-level loan database to provide increased transparency to the securities lending market.