OTC derivatives documentation specialist DocGenix and Markit Document Exchange have signed a strategic initiative aimed at combining their respective offerings to create a single platform for the management of complex legal agreements. Penny Davenport, managing director and head of Markit Document Exchange, explains that the two vendors have been in discussions about the project since the fourth quarter of last year and have high hopes for its success.
The project will combine DocGenix’s inSight analytics service with Markit’s document management platform to create a combined offering that will allow for storage, querying, reporting and dissemination of the documents on the platform. “As with all our successful partnerships, we were able to define a clear value proposition for clients right off the bat,” explains Davenport. “Equally, we established that we were not competing in any core areas. From that point, it made it very easy for us to define an integration model for customers that worked for everyone involved. These have been similar themes in other partnerships we have developed.”
Markit Document Exchange has certainly been busy on the partnership front this year, with the announcement of several new agreements, including tax compliance software and consulting company, Compliance Technologies International (CTI) and business entity data specialist Avox last month alone. It has also gained a certain amount of traction in the market and now boasts 100 buy side and sell side clients with key documentation for more than 4,000 funds.
The partnership with DocGenix, however, was motivated by the potential to combine its analytics provided by inSight with Markit’s own platform, which was launched in May last year, explains Davenport. “DocGenix have built very sophisticated technology to parse and extract data (specifically ‘terms’) from client agreements. The results are very accurate which is what clients are looking for in terms of managing their documentation challenges. They are a best of breed partner for Markit,” she says.
DocGenix inSight is aimed at providing participants in the OTC derivatives markets with the ability to manage risks inherent in portfolios of International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) legal agreements and meet the challenges being set by regulators, policy makers and industry groups. To this end, it converts ISDA legal agreements into a structured XML format that features both text and structured data. The document analysis tool, Synopsys, provides the online ability to query data, search text, collate or compare provisions of a particular type, and run critical stress tests based on hypothetical scenarios – across all or any part of a portfolio of agreements, says the vendor.
Daniel Mudge, CEO of DocGenix, reckons the partnership will allow customers to meet the enhanced risk management standards of the post-credit crisis age. DocGenix general counsel, John Berry, adds: “We see this as a natural fit, combining deep analytical capability in a critical area with the impressive reach of Markit Document Exchange.”
Davenport believes the combined offering will prove attractive to both sets of clients: “Customers will be able to store all their documents and agreements in one place, in an organised manner, in Markit Document Exchange, and from there move seamlessly into DocGenix to parse those agreements. It’s a classic one stop shop model.”
Not that the dotted line has been signed, the next phase is the integration of the two solutions, but Davenport reckons the challenges will be fairly minimal. “The challenges from an integration perspective are very limited. The biggest challenge we have is in working with DocGenix to prioritise which document types they should apply their technology to next. The demand from customers far exceeds the current range of documents which DocGenix covers so we’ll all be busy for some time to come!”
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