Valuation & Risk Strategies Group from S&P Launches Web-Based Valuations Portal for End-of-Day Pricing and Terms & Conditions Data

NEW YORK, Feb. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Fixed Income Risk Management Services (FIRMS), an independent analytics and research unit at S&P delivering solutions that help investors perform cross-market analysis and valuations on the financial instruments in their portfolios, announced a new product launch from its Valuation & Risk Strategies group.  Beginning today, Valuation & Risk Strategies will provide pricing data for over three million global fixed income securities as well as market-based assumptions used in the price generation of 1.4 million structured finance securities via the Web-based Global Credit Portal.  

Previously available to S&P customers through a data feed, this independent fixed income pricing data will now be fully accessible through a streamlined analytics platform on the Web.  Among the new features:

• Asset Class Advanced Pricing Search: Coverage of over three million securities through a sophisticated search engine or one-by-one look-up.

• Terms & Conditions Data: An extensive fixed income database containing securities descriptions on over 1.9 million U.S. municipal, U.S. government and U.S. and non-U.S. corporate securities.

• Automated Price-Challenge: A built-in price challenge tool covering the entire universe of evaluated securities.

• Market-Based Factors: Assumptions used in the creation of prices on structured finance securities, including default probability, loss severity, and prepayment speed, are included along with underlying asset pricing data.

"Investors in the current marketplace find that they need to go beyond standard pricing data to rigorously analyze the inputs and assumptions that went into deriving those prices," said Frank Ciccotto, senior vice president, S&P's Valuation & Risk Strategies,  "By publishing the assumptions that are used in our independent pricing process alongside our pricing data, and making this information available through a Web-based analytics platform, we are able to give investors the ability to engage in a much deeper level of analysis.  This move toward providing a greater level of transparency is a major initiative that we will be expanding throughout the year."

Delivering an unparalleled level of insight to investors, risk managers and accounting personnel, the new valuations portal will help market participants maintain a balance between mark-to-market pricing and other market pressures that impact the valuation process.

Evaluated pricing via the Web-based Global Credit Portal will be distributed by Standard & Poor's Securities Evaluations, Inc., a part of FIRMS and Valuations & Risk Strategies.

About Standard & Poor's Fixed Income Risk Management Services

Standard & Poor's Fixed Income Risk Management Services delivers a portfolio of products and services to investors that serve the global financial markets by providing market intelligence and analytic insight for risk driven investment analysis, including for the debt, structured finance, derivative and credit markets.  Standard & Poor's Fixed Income Risk Management Services are performed separately from any other analytic activity of Standard & Poor's.  The unit has no access to non- public information received by other units of Standard & Poor's. Standard & Poor's does not trade on its own account. 

About Standard & Poor's Securities Evaluations

Standard & Poor's Securities Evaluations, Inc. (SPSE) is a registered investment adviser and a wholly owned subsidiary of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.  SPSE provides independent fixed-income evaluations of over 3 million securities.  It also distributes to its client base pricing data and equity pricing services of other unaffiliated firms.  In total, SPSE provides coverage for more than four million global securities.  Prices of firms other than those of SPSE are the responsibility of those firms and not SPSE and are produced under the firms' methodologies and policies and procedures, not those of SPSE.  SPSE also provides customized reports on valuations of securities under various scenarios and analyses of certain U.S. and European fixed income securities using its proprietary risk to price scoring methodology.  Analytic services and products provided by Standard & Poor's are the result of separate activities designed to preserve the independence and objectivity of each analytic process.  Standard & Poor's has established policies and procedures to maintain the confidentiality of non-public information received during each analytic process. Standard & Poor's and its affiliates provide a wide range of services to, or relating to, many organizations, including issuers of securities, investment advisers, broker-dealers, investment banks, other financial institutions and financial intermediaries, and accordingly may receive fees or other economic benefits from those organizations, including organizations whose securities or services they may recommend, rate, include in model portfolios, evaluate or otherwise address. For more information, visit www.standardandpoors.com.

SOURCE Standard & Poor's