As Europe’s private debt market continues to evolve, those managers well placed to offer direct lending strategies could benefit substantially as insurance companies, in particular, seek alternative yield-enhancing funds within their credit portfolios. Not only do direct lending strategies provide stable, consistent returns over a multi-year time horizon, they also allow insurers to make more efficient use of their Solvency Capital Ratio (SCR) under Solvency II regulation. The capital charge is estimated to be 20 per cent. Factor in that these are private closed-ended investments, offering insulation from market volatility, and suddenly one begins to understand why direct lending is

AlphaClone has launched of the AlphaClone International Downside Hedged Index, which is designed to give investors access to the investment ideas of the world’s most established hedge funds, while simultaneously hedging against protracted market downturns. The index follows the same proprietary Clone Score methodology used by AlphaClone’s flagship AlphaClone Hedge Fund Downside Hedged Index, which has approximately USD170 million in assets currently tracking the index, and has returned an average of 14.35 per cent per year versus 12.40 per cent for the S&P 500 Total Return Index over the three-year period ending 9/30/2015.   Earlier in the year, the firm

Risk solutions provider NetOTC has launched NetOTC Bilateral, an end-to-end bilateral market infrastructure for the margining of non-cleared OTC derivatives. NetOTC Bilateral is connecting to Euroclear’s Collateral Highway in an effort to answer the market demand for greater transparency, resilience and addressing the market need for funding, capital and operational cost efficiencies. From September 2016, the mandatory exchange of Initial Margin (IM) comes into effect. NetOTC Bilateral is a sophisticated IM solution that goes beyond the calculation and calling of standard two-way margining. NetOTC Bilateral is offered as a dedicated service that works with existing service providers. Robust collateral segregation,

Cordium, a provider of compliance consulting and software solutions to the financial services industry, has launched a new electronic communications review service. As technology advances and communication channels become the new standard, electronic communication oversight and document retention has become broader and more closely scrutinised. It is now necessary for both RIAs and Broker Dealers to monitor emails, instant messages, and other means of office communication in order to adhere to numerous regulatory requirements and stay consistent with a culture of compliance. Cordium’s electronic communications review service offers a streamlined solution for investment firms.   The new service offers a