FT Interactive Data Rolls Out Markit Independent Loan Valuations

FT Interactive Data has entered the third phase of its roll-out of data from Markit Group to its clients, under its established partnership with the vendor. FT Interactive Data clients can now access independent valuations of syndicated bank loans via its FTS online portfolio administration service. Markit’s single name CDS and CDS indices data is already available via FTS. According to Ian Blance, vice president, capital markets, Interactive Data (Europe), there are already clients lined up to take the loan data. “There is a degree of initial set-up, involving mapping to the identifiers used by the loans – there is no official loan identification mechanism – but this should be very straightforward,” he says. FT Interactive Data and Markit continue to explore ways to co-operate further, Blance adds. “We have now phased in the introduction of the Markit data for which we are seeing the most demand from our clients, but there are a number of areas on which we are still working. The major part of the relationship – incorporating the richness of Markit’s CDS data into our own evaluation processes – is a much longer term project that is still ongoing.”