Thunderhead.com and Markit have formed 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, says: “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 says: “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.”