This independent price challenge tool provides fixed income professionals with a rapid and transparent solution to submit and resolve evaluated pricing challenges directly via Thomson Reuters DataScope Select, the strategic global data delivery platform for non-streaming content.

AskTRPS enhances the ability to meet new Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, SEC and other current reporting requirements for fixed income pricing. Utilizing the tool, DataScope Select clients can create customized reports for boards and auditors on their price challenges including the number of challenges, asset class breakdowns, percentage changes and directional movement. AskTRPS also offers simplified client reporting on price challenge metrics and improved communication features.

“At a time of rising market volatility and increasing regulatory oversight, our price challenge mechanism answers a clear need in the fixed income community,“ said Jayme Fagas, global head of Valuations & Transparency for Thomson Reuters Pricing and Reference Services. “With AskTRPS, our DataScope Select customers tell us they now have the enhanced single-source transparent solution that only a completely independent third party evaluated pricing source can provide.”

In developing the price challenge solution,TRPS canvassed its large, fast-growing client base of asset managers, mutual funds, custodian banks, mutual fund administrators and risk managers, who use the DataScope Select repository of over 2.5 million fixed income securities, derivatives and bank loans. The goal was to create a solution to provide added information supporting the price evaluations delivered by TRPS’s global team of 150 evaluated pricing experts and over 5,000 content specialists, who are in constant contact with market participants. This new tool will also help to streamline communications and better address clients’ regulatory reporting needs.

DataScope Select already offers in-depth information on each underlying security, including price history, derived analytics, pricing inputs, transparency, tolerance breaks and unchanged price details. TRPS evaluators currently process, clarify and resolve numerous price challenges per month, and TRPS aims to incorporate this DataScope Select information into the price challenge process, to provide additional data behind challenges.

The AskTRPS mechanism allows DataScope Select users and TRPS evaluators to add comments to an assigned or resolved challenge within 36 hours of submission. They also can upload relevant information with each challenge, such as trade data or market color. Additionally, clients are alerted via email when a price challenge has been resolved. These features improve the communication between clients and evaluators.