Markit to Improve Efficiency in Loan Market with New Identifiers
London, New York, NY and Dallas, TX – Markit, a financial information services company, today announced plans to introduce a new, comprehensive loan identification system to enable straight-through-processing. The initiative will provide individual loan identifiers and a numbering system for loan market participants.
Markit’s new universal set of identifiers for the syndicated loan market will improve accuracy and operational efficiency by ensuring that information transmitted is linked to the correct underlying loan and delivered to the right market participant. Markit’s identification system will connect existing disparate data and loan systems as well as other identifiers to ensure ease of adoption.
At present, financial information is transmitted by fax, email or phone, resulting in operational inefficiency and high error rates. The new loan identifiers will provide coverage from the borrower down to the individual accruals, and will map to other commonly used identifiers in the market. The new participant identifiers will cover all loan entities including the funds that hold the loans. This effort builds on Markit’s extensive experience in managing industry standard identifiers such as Markit RED[1], Markit WSO Data[2] and Markit LoanX IDs[3].
Anthony R. Clemente, Chief Executive Officer of Canaras Capital Management, said: “Some of the previous innovations have already proven successful as seen in the progress made with Markit WSO Data and Markit WSO Fax. Having the correct data on the underlying loans definitely improves the overall decision-making for portfolio managers and traders.”
Eric Rosen, Head of North American Credit Trading at JPMorgan, said: “The recent acquisition of J.P. Morgan FCS Corporation by Markit creates a unique and compelling opportunity to bring buy-side and sell-side initiatives together. As a result, Markit is best positioned to bring meaningful innovation to the loan market, with identifiers leading the way.”
Armins Rusis, Executive Vice President and Global Co-Head of Fixed Income at Markit, said: “This marks an important step in our drive to improve efficiency, transparency and straight-through processing within the loan industry. With Markit’s leadership in other identification systems, coupled with strategic acquisitions and initiatives in the processing and trading space, we are uniquely positioned to drive real change within the loan market.”
A primary set of identifiers will be available by the end of the year.
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For further information, please contact:
Teresa Chick
Managing Director, Corporate Communications
Markit
Email: teresa.chick@markit.com
Tel: +44 20 7260 2094
John Dooley
Vice President, Corporate Communications
Markit
Email: john.dooley@markit.com
Telephone: +1 212 205 1310
About Markit
Markit is a financial information services company with more than 1,000 employees in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Over 1,000 financial institutions use our independent services to manage risk, improve operational efficiency and meet regulatory requirements. For more information, see www.markit.com
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[1] Markit RED is the industry standard for reference entity and reference obligation identifiers used throughout the credit default swap market to reduce legal and operational risk in trading, documentation and trade settlement.
[2] Markit WSO Data provides accurate referential and transactional leveraged loan information for straight-through-processing.
[3] Markit LoanX IDs are unique identifiers of a particular loan tranche that facilitate swift valuation of syndicated loan portfolios.