Thunderhead.com, the global industry standard for trade and relationship documentation, and Markit (Nasdaq: MRKT), a leading global diversified provider of financial information services, today announced a partnership to establish an online service for creating and negotiating Master Confirmation Agreements (MCAs) at scale.
Markit will integrate Thunderhead.com’s ONE for Capital Markets software as a service (SaaS) solution 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 buy-side 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 sell-side demonstrated compelling results: negotiating and executing MCAs electronically took 30% less time than doing so using paper documents.
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 (CSAs) to Investment Management Agreements (IMAs).
“This partnership exemplifies how Markit collaborates with best-in-class 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, Thunderhead.com said: “Our valued partnership with Markit has led us to build a service that will help the derivative 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 increases efficiency significantly and enables users to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape.”
The solution will be released into the market in early 2015.
About ONE for Capital Markets
Thunderhead.com’s ONE for Capital Markets solution automates trade and relationship documentation and streamlines paper transactions across the entire trading lifecycle.
ONE for Capital Markets is based on Thunderhead.com’s Smart Content capability delivering the functionality of the undisputed industry standard platform as a SaaS facility, and adds new community collaboration capabilities, automating the generation of all trade documentation.
The result is a comprehensive, highly scalable solution that streamlines documentation across every product class – OTC Derivatives, Retail, Cash and Physical Commodity – and the entire trading lifecycle: reducing costs, increasing transparency and simplifying compliance.
About Thunderhead.com
Thunderhead.com is the industry standard for trade and relationship documentation. Additionally, the company provides a range of powerful SaaS capabilities as part of its ONE Engagement Hub that lead the Customer Engagement market. The ONE Engagement Hub ties together customer insight, context and journey behavior and uses these to inform interactions with customers and partners across all touchpoints.
14 of the G15 investment banks and some of the world’s largest energy and commodity companies trust Thunderhead.com to help them simplify trade documentation for all market participants, across all asset classes and product types.
We make it easy for customer-facing teams to design and deploy great customer journeys based on this rich insight and through value-driven interactions that lead to long-term engagement.
The result is that businesses have more power to drive revenue, brand strength and differentiation by delivering far beyond isolated interactions and experiences but by creating the rich relationships that great businesses are built on. Thunderhead.com serves its global customer base from offices located in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.
For more information, see: www.thunderhead.com
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About Markit
Markit is a leading global diversified provider of financial information services. Markit provides products that enhance transparency, reduce risk and improve operational efficiency. Customers include banks, hedge funds, asset managers, central banks, regulators, auditors, fund administrators and insurance companies. Founded in 2003, Markit employs over 3,000 people in 10 countries. Markit shares are listed on Nasdaq under the symbol “MRKT.”
For more information, please see: www.markit.com
Contacts:
Peter Hay, 44 20 7494 5000
phay@thunderhead.com
