S&P Valuation and Risk Strategies, an independent and analytically separate business unit within Standard & Poor's that provides users with market intelligence and analytic insight for risk-driven investment analysis, and Fiserv (NASDAQ: FISV), the leading global provider of financial services technology solutions, today announced a partnership to further industry implementation of the American Securitization Forum's (ASF) Loan Identification Number Code (LINC) initiative.
ASF LINC is a unique ID for a wide range of assets that may be pooled and sold in the capital markets. The identification code captures the loan type, origination date, country of origin and randomized alphanumeric data, and it is stored in a central loan data repository administered by S&P Valuation and Risk Strategies. The ASF LINC is intended to provide investors, lenders and financial institutions a means to track a loan's performance throughout its life after securitization.
Fiserv is the first technology provider to integrate ASF LINC in its loan servicing platform. In collaboration with S&P, Fiserv will provide increased disclosure and transparency to the mortgage and asset-backed securities marketplace by providing this industry-wide loan identification code.
"We believe a widely adopted loan identification system will help bring greater transparency to global credit markets and are fully committed to supporting the ASF LINC initiative," said Jonathan Reeve, managing director, S&P Valuation and Risk Strategies. "Fiserv's incoporation of this data into its loan servicing platform repreresents a significant and historic step in this direction. We hope other technology providers will follow Fiserv's lead and incorporate ASF LINC too."
"The Loan Servicing Platform from Fiserv delivers single-platform loan servicing for all retail loans and is an example of the Fiserv core competency in Processing Services," said Norwood Sloan, vice president, Loan Servicing Mortgage Products, Fiserv. "By partnering with S&P, Fiserv will be able to provide additional market intelligence so that our clients can make more-informed investment decisions which can help make financial services safer and more cost-effective. This partnership is another example of our commitment to help our clients streamline their data channels and drive the digital transformation of the financial services industry."
Fiserv and S&P have a long-standing relationship through the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indexes, which use Fiserv Case-Shiller Index(R) data to track monthly changes in the value of the residential real estate market. In addition to 20 regional indices and two composite indices, the S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index is a broader composite that calculates single-family home prices for the nine U.S. Census divisions on a monthly basis.