CME Group-owned Credit Market Analysis (CMA) has signed a partnership agreement with valuation analytics vendor Pricing Partners, under which CMA will integrate its credit default swap (CDS) price data from DataVision with Pricing Partners’ multi-asset class pricing platform, Price-it Excel. The vendors claim this will provide OTC credit market participants with greater accuracy and transparency of valuations, against a background of increased scrutiny of pricing practices.
Laurent Paulhac, CEO of CMA, explains the reasoning behind the decision to make its buy side consensus-based CDS pricing available via the Pricing Partner platform: “It is important for us that our clients can consume the data they need via the platform of their choice. Combining data from CMAs buy-side consortium with Pricing Partners’ technology enables market participants to apply the most reliable CDS data to a wide variety of trading, analytic and risk management functions.”
Eric Benhamou, CEO of Pricing Partners, says it chose to partner with CMA because of the “precision and timeliness” of its data, which he describes as “premium fuel” for the Price-it Excel platform.
The pressure for firms to increase the transparency of their valuations practices has meant a boom in spending in this sector, despite the downturn in the global markets. This, in turn, has prompted an increase in the valuations vendors on the scene and a fiercely competitive marketplace.
To stave off competition many vendors have opted to either merge or partner with other market contenders and this partnership is one such example. Another similar deal was agreed between RiskVal and Markit in February, under which RiskVal integrated Markit’s industry standard pricing and reference data into its Credit-X platform.
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