In a market recently riddled with uncertainty and volatility, funds have been finding it difficult to maintain an accurate and timely valuation of their assets, especially as the number of pricing sources they deal with rises. For funds that price portions of their book on a daily basis, this challenge becomes twofold due to the fact that quotes need to be received as soon as markets close in each of the geographic regions they trade. On top of this, the pricing process as a whole inherently lacks a standardized format across data providers for sending quotes, which requires funds to manually clean the quotes they receive and map them to held positions.
Due to the number of complexities and nuances involved, managers have begun to automate their pricing process and move away from the manual functions that would typically lead them to error. By leveraging the benefits of automation, funds can maintain real-time integration with various pricing sources as well as heightened levels of efficiency in several core areas of their process such as:
- Pricing Vendor Quotes: With an increasing number of pricing vendors now offering quotes over API or SFTP-based interfaces in a hands-off and timely manner, funds can avoid the use of stale information throughout their process.
- Broker Run Messages: Many analysts and traders still receive quotes for their positions as a part of broker run messages, but it is now possible to receive these as a data file and automate their consumption.
- Broker-Dealer Statements: These statements are received in various file forms, most often via Excel or PDF. With the evolution of PDF readers, funds can extract quotes directly off of these statements and minimize the risk of manual error.
- Challenge and Solicitation: Funds often spend significant time soliciting quotes from relevant sources and even more time disputing the prices they receive with vendors and brokers. With an automated challenge and solicitation process, funds can reduce this time by 20 to 30%.
IVP Pricing Automation Solution, offers a distinguished capability that has been built on having years of experience in handling integration with pricing sources through standard adapters. Leveraging this expertise, many leading asset managers have automated their pricing process from end to end, which has resulted in significant cost savings and a better implementation of their valuation policy.