Continued Refinements Increase Efficiency in the Evaluation Audit and Due Diligence Process, and Best Execution Trade Analysis
Interactive Data Corporation, a leading provider of independent evaluated pricing, valuation and reference data services, today announced the release of a new set of enhancements to VantageSM. With these new tools, Vantage can more effectively meet the requirements of both the buy-side and sell-side in their efforts to assess the key inputs used by Interactive Data in its evaluated pricing processes.
Over the past nine months, a diverse group of financial firms worldwide have implemented Vantage to assist with a range of fixed income transparency needs.
“Financial institutions and traders need to understand and substantiate valuations for the financial instruments they hold, and pricing services can play a vital role in helping the industry to navigate related challenges,” said Liz Duggan, managing director, Global Evaluations for Interactive Data. “Interactive Data continues to increase transparency into our evaluations by providing new visualization and data reporting tools that help our clients meet their due diligence requirements.”
“We have seen an extension of the core use cases supported by Vantage. While asset managers remain focused on Topic 820 and IFRS 13, the Vantage customer profile now encompasses sales and trading, collateral management and best execution analysis functions,” said John Locksley, director, Vantage Product Manager. “Broker-dealers are looking to demonstrate best execution and to document compliance with new rules such as FINRA Rule 5310 and MSRB Rule G-43. We’re now also starting to see interest in the hedge fund and prime brokerage space as these clients face increased regulatory scrutiny around valuations.”
Recent features added to Vantage include:
• Intuitive Visualization of Key Transparency Data: Graphical displays provide views on daily and historical market trades and color alongside Interactive Data’s evaluated price; an innovative “Market Depth Indicator” that quantifies the number of market data sources and quotes per source; and a comparable bond feature that identifies securities with similar bond characteristics
• User-Friendly Evaluations Report: Provides access and download of key evaluations, reference, and assumptive data fields. View inputs into evaluated prices for a portfolio to support self-service “deep dives,” then link outliers back to the Vantage Transparency interface
• Automated Evaluations Workflow: Efficiently manage the review and validation process with an auditable, controlled, spreadsheet-free reporting tool; efficiently generates a sub-portfolio that identifies tolerance breaks via color-coded heat maps, with the ability to filter, sort and download data
• Additional display of market color and assumptive data for European bonds and other features to support the growing demand for transparency data in EMEA and Asia Pacific regions
