IHS Markit, a world leader in critical information, analytics and solutions, today announced that its best-in-class OTC derivatives valuation data is available to financial institutions for best execution compliance. The time-stamped valuation data can help firms monitor intraday and historic transaction costs across interest rate, equity, FX, credit, commodity and structured product OTC derivatives.

Evolving market practices and global regulations such as MiFIDII, PRIIPS and RG 97 aim to gradually increase transparency on the execution quality of financial market transactions. As best execution requirements continue to broaden, the most complex trades in OTC markets have come into scope, creating a need for standardized valuation procedures and reporting documentation.

“Financial institutions need to validate and contextualize the effectiveness, quality and timeliness of each transaction. In terms of compliance, OTC trades are the most difficult to manage due to their complexity and the availability of quality market data,” said Laura Misher, managing director of derivatives data and valuation services at IHS Markit. “As a leading source of market data on OTC derivatives with significant breadth of inputs, we are uniquely positioned to help firms address these challenges by providing transparent valuations and inputs that can be used for transaction cost analysis.” 

Leveraging its industry-standard Portfolio Valuations data and methodology, IHS Markit can seamlessly calculate OTC trade slippage, which is the difference between the executed and expected price of transactions. Trade slippage can be expressed in a range of price or market sensitivity terms and firms can use this information to confirm execution quality and prepare reports on trading effectiveness.

Since 2011, IHS Markit has provided sophisticated tools for best execution and transaction cost analysis (TCA), covering a widening array of assets, including equities, bonds, FX, bank loans, money markets, CDS and other OTC derivatives. The tools provide actionable insight based on independent data, enabling execution benchmarking for compliance and reporting.

“As the regulatory frameworks have expanded from equities to bonds and OTC assets, the requirements for data and analytics have also become increasingly complex,” said Michael Richter, executive director of trading analytics at IHS Markit. “With this in mind, we are committed to enabling firms to reduce the cost and burden of compliance through our comprehensive suite of best execution solutions.”