Markit, a leading, global financial information services company, today announced it will add US commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS) to its evaluated bond pricing service.
CMBS prices will be supplied by Trepp, a leading provider of CMBS and commercial mortgage pricing information, analytics and technology.
The addition of CMBS complements Markit's already extensive US asset backed securities (ABS) and mortgage backed securities (MBS) pricing service and allows Markit to offer its customers access to independent prices across the whole universe of US structured finance securities.
The move comes as the changing regulatory and accounting environment, along with the intense focus on transparency, have increased demand for high quality independent pricing data for use within price discovery, valuations and risk management processes.
Nigel Hyde, Managing Director and Global Head of Fixed Income Pricing at Markit, said: "We are delighted to incorporate Trepp's high quality prices within our evaluated bond pricing service. This is good news for transparency in the US structured finance markets. Our service not only enables our customers to price the US structured finance securities on their books accurately but it also allows them to understand how prices on these securities are calculated. This is crucial for auditing and regulatory reporting purposes."
Andrew Leibman, Senior Vice President at Trepp, said: "We are very pleased to be teaming up with Markit on this new initiative. The volatility in fixed income over the last few years has underscored the need for investors to have access to superior valuations that reflect the latest market turns. By combining Trepp's best of breed CMBS prices with Markit's well-regarded ABS and RMBS valuations, investors now have the complete solution."
Recent additions to the range of structured finance securities covered by Markit's ABS pricing service also include non-agency securities (~60,000), agency pass-throughs (~1 million), agency CMOs (~100,000) as well as credit card, student loan and auto securities (~3,500).
Markit Evaluated Bonds prices 2.5 m 2.5 million securities daily including corporate, government, sovereign, agency, municipal and structured finance securities. The service includes full transparency on the pricing sources and methodology used as well as transparent liquidity scores based on market depth, bid-offer spreads and market activity.