Municipalities Leverage Capabilities of BondEdge to Assist with Investment Risk Management Processes
Interactive Data Corporation (NYSE: IDC), a leading provider of financial market data, analytics and related solutions, today announced that a growing number of U.S. city and state agencies are utilizing services offered by its Fixed Income Analytics business.
The Company currently provides its market-leading BondEdge® service to a wide range of city and state government investment managers — including six new clients that have subscribed to the service since the beginning of 2009. BondEdge city and state clients include the City of Los Angeles, San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System (SFERS) and additional city and county public employee retirement systems, state investment councils, state and county treasuries, teachers retirement systems, and permanent school funds.
BondEdge can help municipalities with their due diligence processes and respond to reporting requirements such as GASB 40: Deposit and Investment Risk Disclosures. In addition, this service can assist government entities in monitoring funds that are managed by external investment firms. BondEdge is designed to analyze portfolio risk and help identify opportunities using robust modeling techniques and advanced research. It features fixed income security analytics, bond swap, and portfolio “what-if” capabilities that collectively can help support portfolio analysis and risk management processes.
“In the past, state and government agencies tended to look toward ratings firms for ‘peace of mind’ in assessing credit risk with respect to their portfolios” said Keith Webster, managing director, Interactive Data Fixed Income Analytics. “In today’s market environment, these organizations recognize the need to supplement those activities by working with independent providers of fixed income analytics whose services can assist with due diligence, including determining exposure to credit, probability of default, and the number of callable securities in their investment portfolios. Interactive Data is committed to providing tools to these agencies to help support their risk management activities.”
BondEdge can also be customized into a “service bureau level” solution for smaller municipalities. Built on the Microsoft® .NET Framework, BondEdge features an application programming interface (API) that enables clients to access the BondEdge platform from Microsoft Excel® and other third-party applications.
