This announcement marks the growth of Bloomberg’s relationship with RBC Capital Markets, whose parent company, Royal Bank of Canada, already uses a number of Bloomberg products across its enterprise.

RBC Capital Markets is a premier global investment bank providing expertise in banking, finance and capital markets to corporations, institutional investors, asset managers and governments around the world. They are one of the largest municipal markets and finance operations in the U.S., achieving and maintaining a top five national ranking as a senior manager of negotiated municipal issues. RBC Capital Markets will now use Bloomberg’s evaluated pricing, BVAL, for independent price verification. In addition, Bloomberg provides broad coverage of U.S. fixed income securities, access to in-house evaluator teams and transparency into its pricing models through Bloomberg Terminal screens.

”As a top five firm in negotiated underwritings in the U.S., RBC Capital Markets places great emphasis on accuracy and transparency in pricing,” said Keith Solomon, Managing Director and Deputy Head, Municipal Products at RBC Capital Markets. “Bloomberg’s reputation for data quality and transparency were key factors in making our decision.”

BVAL draws on real-time access to market observations from a variety of contributed sources, such as reporting facilities, trading venues and market-makers. Traders, portfolio managers and pricing professionals gain transparency into how prices were derived by accessing BVAL through the Bloomberg Terminal service. Today, BVAL prices 2.5 million fixed income securities, including nearly 1 million municipal bonds. Prices are recalibrated three times a day using the most current and relevant trade data available.

“Bloomberg is offering innovative solutions for the municipal market that provide increased transparency and workflow efficiencies. We have integrated BVAL with the Bloomberg Barclays indices, released AAA<GO> as a market standard Muni curve and integrated yield spread analytics into sales and trading workflows,” said Varun Pawar, global head of Bloomberg’s evaluated pricing service.

BVAL prices are the result of data-driven approach and are closely monitored by a team of municipal market experts to help ensure reliability and relevance of data that reflects the market objectively. Evaluators on Bloomberg’s municipal bond valuations team have an average of 15 years of industry expertise.

BVAL is the primary pricing source for the Bloomberg Barclays bond indices which are widely recognized benchmarks for fixed income investors.