SIX Financial Information has set up an evaluated pricing valuation team in Frankfurt with a view to expanding its coverage of European assets and improving support for European clients. The team has four staff, with a fifth due to join shortly, and adds to existing teams of evaluators in Denmark and Stamford, Connecticut.
According to Ian Blance, head of business development for evaluated pricing at SIX Financial Information, “We decided last year that our evaluated pricing strategy needed a team in Europe, so we set one up in Frankfurt late last year. We had been covering fixed income and some OTC derivates, but with the Frankfurt team in place we can add more of these types of products and carry out required market conformity checks.”
The team is already covering more instruments and Blance hopes the extended service will satisfy not only existing customers, but also attract new ones. He says: “In Europe we see an increasing requirement for external checks on valuations that are defensible. We will cover more and more instruments in a defensible fashion.”
The Frankfurt team will also assist European clients, responding more quickly to their questions and collaborating with the team in Stamford and evaluated pricing consultants in global financial centres.
Thomas Stumpf, head of evaluated pricing valuations Europe and head of the team in Frankfurt, says: “At a time when clients are placing great importance on quality and service, the presence of a central evaluated pricing team in Frankfurt is being received very positively. Clients are benefiting from direct contact and rapid response times.”
The addition of the Frankfurt team reflects SIX Financial Information’s strategy of developing the evaluated pricing service it introduced in August 2012 into additional asset classes. In November 2012, the strategy led SIX Financial Information to partner Numerix and embed Numerix’ cross-asset analytics for derivatives valuations into the company’s evaluated pricing service infrastructure.
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