Markit will integrate Thunderhead.com’s ONE for Capital Markets, software as a service that automates the production, editing and execution of MCAs and other capital markets documentation, with Counterparty Manager, Markit’s secure document management platform used by approximately 80 banks, 900 buyside firms and 6,000 corporations for trading account onboarding, reference data management, regulatory compliance and other reporting.

A recent pilot programme with 11 of the largest global derivative trading firms from the buy and sellside demonstrated that negotiating and executing MCAs took 30% less time electronically than in paper form.  

Lansing Gatrell, managing director and head of Counterparty Manager at Markit, said: “Automating how MCAs are created, negotiated and managed is just the first step for us and we aim to expand our partnership with Thunderhead.com to automate other trade and relationship documents ranging from credit support annexes to investment management agreements.  This partnership exemplifies how Markit collaborates with third party providers to offer centralised, highly scalable services that help the industry reduce costs and become more operationally efficient.”

Robin Moody, global head of capital markets at Thunderhead.com, said: “Our valued partnership with Markit has led us to build a service that will help the derivatives trading community to reduce risk and streamline the trade process for OTC derivatives.  By joining our ONE for Capital Markets solution to Markit’s Counterparty Manager, we have created an on-demand solution that will make the industry more efficient and enable users to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape.”

Markit and Thunderhead.com expect to deploy the solution in the first quarter of 2015.