• SuperDerivatives delivers new level of access to options underlying data, bringing additional transparency to options valuations
  
  
• Revaluation Investigation and Analysis System (RIAS) launched to assist in analysing and investigating valuations for all OTC and exchange traded derivatives in all asset classes
  
  
• Banks and funds benefit from additional tool to meet regulatory advice on seeking independent valuation
   

London, 14 June 2010: A pioneering tool for accurately valuing over-the-counter (OTC) and exchange-traded derivatives was launched today to hundreds of fund managers at the industry’s key annual conference in Monaco.

SuperDerivatives (SD), the derivatives benchmark, announced the launch of its Revaluation Investigation and Analysis system (RIAS) to validate valuations for complex and vanilla derivatives in all asset classes, heralding the application as a milestone to assist professionals managing all sorts of financial instruments.

RIAS is a powerful web based interactive application. It allows the user to provide a set of shifts in the underlying yield curves and volatility surfaces and the system displays the resulting valuations and associated risk measures.

The tool enables users to analyse the pricing assumption of individual trades and for price sensitivity comparison and stress testing of large portfolios of instruments.  The results are shown within SD’s various displays and can be exported to a spreadsheet, to in-house systems, or third party application.

Participants in the marketplace find it challenging to compute accurate valuations and risk measures or to validate data from multiple external sources.  The newly released RIAS service is a solution to this problem.  A number of major fund managers have now deployed SD’s RIAS for valuation of their fund clients’ portfolios.

Fund administrators are looking for an independent comparison of data based on various assumptions, an effective independent source, accurate and transparent market data, and a consistent process that could be shared with their clients. SD’s new service addresses these requirements.

RIAS is an enhanced capability to SD’s broad suite of applications and data services that address the needs of the OTC market. It utilises cloud computing and sophisticated methods to accelerate calculations of risk measures in large portfolios.

David Gertler, Director of Strategic Sales at SD, comments: “We firmly believe this will mark a sea change in the way fund managers manage and value OTC and exchange traded derivatives for their clients.”

“These are instruments which have a real world use to manage risk.  Regulators agree that seeking an independent valuation based on the best available data across the widest range of instruments is best practice. We have delivered the tool for this need.”

“SD’s new investigation and analysis system offers a truly world-class service for investors, with its rich combination of analytics, wide asset coverage, proven technology and unrivalled risk management tools.”

SD is widely considered the independent global benchmark for derivatives, offering the most comprehensive and trusted multi-asset derivatives pricing, revaluation and management tools available for the widest range of derivative instruments and asset classes. It is delivered as a web based Software-As-A-Service (Saas) model, which is both quick and cost-effective to deploy.

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Editor’s notes:
Over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives are contracts that are traded (and privately negotiated) directly between two parties. The OTC derivative market is the largest market for derivatives. According to the Bank for International Settlements, the total outstanding notional amount is USD 684 trillion.

Of this total notional amount, 67% are interest rate contracts, 8% are credit default swaps (CDS), 9% are foreign exchange contracts, 2% are commodity contracts, 1% are equity contracts, and 12% are other.

Regulators including the Financial Services Authority and the International Organisation of Securities Commission’s (IOSCO) have outlined principles that should be used, including hedge funds, to control the valuation process when valuing financial instruments within their investment portfolios.  These recommend a range of measures including independence in the valuation process and the use of third party pricing services.

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About SuperDerivatives
SD is transforming the world of derivatives by introducing transparency to all major traded derivative classes including foreign currency, interest rates, equities, commodities, energy and credit. Providing prices that reflect the interdealer market has led the company’s web-based, market-calibrated solutions to be widely accepted as the benchmark for derivatives pricing. 

Trading professionals on both the buy and sell side benefit daily from SD’s unique combination of unbiased, aggregated market data and sophisticated modeling techniques. The company also provides fully-fledged risk management solutions, award winning derivatives data and independent portfolio revaluation services.

At the core of all the company’s solutions is SD’s extensively sourced and intelligently amalgamated market data, comprising true live market rates that are acid tested in real-time in the marketplace by active traders and run through a proven pricing model.

SD customers include leading banks, hedge funds, asset managers, custodians and hedge fund administrators in more than 60 countries, supported by a global network of SD offices with 24-hour support services.

www.sdgm.com

International Press Contacts
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