Pricing Partners, the independent valuation expert for financial derivatives and a leading provider of pricing analytics systems, announced today that AG Insurance (formerly Fortis Insurance Belgium) has chosen Pricing Partners service to perform independent valuation for some of its equity, funds and interest rates structured products.
“We wanted to challenge and double check the valuation provided by our counterparties for our OTC products. We were also interested in developing more expertise to follow and risk-manage our investment strategies. We found out in Price-it® online a product that offers accurate fair prices with models managing the same level of innovation and complexity as the one of the sell side" said Alain Bombo, senior financial consultant of Finance & Structured products of AG Insurance. “Beyond its proven accuracy, we were impressed with the service’s extensive coverage and quality of the support."
With the current volatile and turbulent environment, insurance companies are looking for independent valuation source to monitor their structured products.
Eric Benhamou, ceo of Pricing Partners, who worked previously at Goldman Sachs, comments “We are very proud to start a long term relationship with a world class asset manager like AG Insurance, known for its great professionalism. AG Insurance adds a key reference to our client portfolio and positions Pricing Partners as a leading provider of financial derivatives pricing solutions. And we anticipate that independent valuation for asset managers using structured products will become central to this activity to risk manage appropriately their positions. With its extensive coverage, its simplicity and its precision, Price-it online matches completely the needs of asset managers and should fulfil their requirements. It enables them to challenge counterparties valuation, build a real pricing expertise and control risks better. Price-it® concentrates years of experience in pricing derivatives and brings to asset managers a powerful tool with the most recent valuation methods.”
Pricing Partners independent valuation is available for all major asset classes of derivatives: interest rates, credit, foreign exchange, equities, inflation, commodities, life insurance, energy and hybrids. It uses Pricing Partners analytics and models with the company proprietary market data as input, providing unmatched coverage and true market values for an extremely broad range of vanilla and exotic instruments.
AG Insurance has chosen Price-it online after months of assessment of the multiple benefits of an independent valuation solution. “The decision of AG Insurance, which has a very strong expertise in structured products, is a strong sign of credibility for Pricing Partners. This demonstrates our ability to offer tailored services. The software responds to a real demand from the market in terms of independent valuation on a wide range of derivatives products”, said Eric Benhamou, president of Pricing Partners. “As we continue our international development, we are very pleased to have such an important client as AG Insurance”.
