Markit Now Offers Clients The First Multi-Dealer Valuations Platform

Markit, a financial information services company, launches 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

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Markit, a financial information services company, launches 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 hours a month.

– More complete position information and a standard statement format across all counterparties ranked as the most important improvements required, followed by an efficient price challenge mechanism.

– 66% of respondents said they received their counterparty statements by email, underlining the potential security risk of misplaced or incorrectly forwarded emails.

– Over 65% of respondents said they were under pressure to conduct more frequent reconciliation with counterparties and provide more frequent NAV computation to investors.

The new platform incorporates a dispute mechanism and workflow tools with full audit trail to enhance the price challenge process. Markit Valuations Manager is integrated with Markit’s Trade Processing PortRec service to enable full life cycle support for OTC derivative positions including counterparty position data delivery, normalisation [1], reconciliation and valuation.

Markit is launching the platform with six banks – Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citi, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and UBS – and expects to add additional participating banks over the coming months.

D.C.

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