Markit, a leading, global financial information services company, today announced it has extended the range of instruments covered by its Portfolio Valuations service to include structured products. The addition of structured products is a major milestone in Markit’s on-going programme to develop comprehensive, independent pricing analytics.
Markit now provides valuations for a wide range of equity, currency and interest rate structured products including:
• Equity structured notes and swaps
• Short- and medium-term currency structured notes and swaps
• Single currency interest rate structured notes and swaps, inflation options and SIFMA swaps
• Hybrid equity / currency structured notes and swaps
• Quanto rates exotics, including quanto CMS caps and floors and quanto CMS spread options
Valuations are provided on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
Markit’s Portfolio Valuations service provides independent, post-trade asset pricing to mutual funds, hedge funds, traditional asset managers, fund administrators, custodians and private banks. The service covers a wide range of cash and OTC derivative instruments – both vanilla and exotic – across the major asset classes, along with credit valuations on investment grade and high yield bonds and syndicated loans. Markit’s valuations are calculated using a wide variety of high quality data inputs that have been tested against market-observed prices.
Last month, Markit launched liquidity metrics detailing market depth information, bid/ask spreads and pricing source to complement its independent valuations for CDS and evaluated bonds. The company plans to add liquidity metrics for loans and asset backed securities in the comings months.
Kevin Borrett, managing director of Portfolio Valuations at Markit, said: “We have extended our Portfolio Valuations service to include structured products in response to client demand. This is an area where our clients and their custodians hold significant positions and have historically relied on a single source of counterparty marks. We are pleased to be able to offer our clients reliable, independent marks and greater transparency for a number of structured products including equity and currency structured notes and swaps. We will continue to expand our modeling and pricing capabilities with a view to offering full coverage of all derivative trades our customers may hold.”
