Pricing and valuation provider, Markit Group Limited, has launched a portfolio valuations service for its buyside clients, which is aimed at mutual funds, hedge funds, traditional asset managers, fund administrators, custodians and banks.
The service was launched to address growing concerns among investors and regulators over the lack of accurate, independent valuations for complex, illiquid instruments. Markit Portfolio Valuations provides post-trade calculation of the gross asset value of a portfolio of trades. The service covers a wide range of securities and OTC derivative instruments, both vanilla and exotic.
Client demand for reliable, transparent marks on complex, illiquid assets coupled with the increased pressure from regulators for a move to best practice in price verification, spurred the launch of Markits Portfolio Valuations service,” said Tim Barker, executive vice president and head of valuations at Markit. “We see this as a key opportunity over the next two years as we work with our clients to enhance their risk management capabilities by providing them with an accurate, independent valuations service.”
Markit began to provide its Portfolio Valuations service to 20 fund administration, asset management and hedge fund clients in 2005. Following significant investment in systems and staff, the service is now offered to clients worldwide.
We were looking for independent valuations of our funds and a quick time to market was essential,” said Stephanie Whitford, head of derivative operations at Schroders. “Markits outsourced solution helped us to implement this by providing a robust, best-of-breed service in just two days. The alternative would have been a large scale system implementation which would have taken many months.”