AUTHENTIC Software GmbH has released openTEF.org, an open internet portal for financial services market participants to work on a standardised format for data exchange on structured finance portfolios. AUTHENTIC, a software and consulting company specializing in financial services, undertook the initiative to develop a easy-to-use and flexible portfolio exchange format for structured finance institutions called Trustee Exchange Format (TEF). The wish to involve all relevant market participants led to the founding of openTEF.org, a non-profit organization to promote and enhance TEF, supported by various financial services market participants. The primary objective underlying the creation of openTEF.org is to improve the quality, uniformity and availability of monitoring and reporting data for structured finance business, by providing a fast and reliable solution that presents the current market situation of traded portfolios. Yury Menchinskiy, Managing Director of AUTHENTIC said: “The amount of traded portfolios can not be optimised with the methods used today. The data formats used at the moment are mostly not suitable for automated processing (i.e. PDF-Documents), requiring continuous manual and error prone processing. TEF assists to eliminate the need for manual data processing thus avoiding human interaction errors.” Building upon the reporting recommendations of standard bodies like the American Securisation Forum, the European Securitisation Forum, or the International Swap and Derivates Association (ISDA), the openTEF-Community is working on a well documented specification to automate and enhance the data exchange concerning structured finance portfolios. Market participants are encouraged to join the openTEF-Community at www.openTEF.org to revise and update the achievements. copyright hedgeweek 2004