Thomson Financial has reached an agreement with Standard & Poor’s Securities Evaluations to make the S & P universe of 2.6 million evaluated bond prices available through the Thomson Intraday Snapshot Service.
The Thomson Intraday Snapshot Service provides fund managers with data, including reference data. Thomson say the addition of evaluated bond prices to the service will help fund administrators and hedge fund management clients mitigate the operational risks arising from the opaque pricing of illiquid securities. These include concerns about the accuracy and validity of margins, capital, collateral, hedging and reporting, which were recently highlighted by the UK’s Financial Services Authority in its Financial Risk Outlook 2006.
“We appreciate that our clients need to price illiquid fixed income securities to help manage both operational risks and changing regulatory requirements,” says Thomas Aubrey, Investment Management Director, Thomson Financial. “The incorporation of bond valuations from Standard & Poor’s Securities Evaluations to the Thomson Intraday Snapshot Service, which already includes the full breadth and depth of Thomson Financial’s real-time and reference content, will help our clients secure timely, independent and objective security valuations.”
Thomson Financial says it chose Standard & Poor’s Securities Evaluations’ content over competitors because of its proven expertise and proprietary valuation methodology. “This allows for clear, considered and timely prices from the full range of information available, helping firms avoid regional pricing discrepancies and other issues on illiquid markets,” explains Thomson in a statement.
Standard & Poor’s Securities Evaluations will deliver prices of illiquid fixed income securities up to five times a day for the following asset classes:
Structured Debt instruments including Global and European Collaterized Mortgage Obligations and Asset and Mortgage backed Securities. Corporates Governments Syndicated loans US municipals Certificates of Deposits Swaps/Swaptions “Our service provides an independent, rigorous and credible answer for intraday valuations and mark-to-market problems within this increasingly important but thinly traded market,” says Frank Cicotto, Senior Vice President, Securities Evaluations, Standard & Poor’s. “This agreement provides an additional important channel for financial services professionals to access Standard & Poor’s global multi-asset class evaluations. We continue to aggressively grow our global asset class coverage especially in the critically important complex instrument sectors. In addition, we will expand our delivery channels to enable our clients to receive the data when and how they need it.”