New functionality supports regulatory margin requirements for non-cleared derivatives.

Smart Communications and IHS Markit Extend Partnership and Launch ISDA 2016 Credit Support Annex for Variation Margin

New functionality supports regulatory margin requirements for non-cleared derivatives

London and New York – October 25, 2016 – SmartDX from Smart Communications, the global industry standard for trade and relationship documentation, and IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO), a leading global diversified provider of financial information services, today announced the launch of new functionality for the ISDA 2016 Credit Support Annex (CSA) for Variation Margin (VM).

The integration of SmartDX into IHS Markit’s Counterparty Manager automates the production, exchange, negotiation and execution of the new ISDA 2016 Variation Margin CSAs, ISDA Master Agreements and Master Confirmation Agreements amongst other document types.

Through the service, SmartDX maintains a machine readable, controllable and audited copy of the document throughout the negotiation process. Documentation is stored alongside an accurate record of the data.  This includes a complete audit trail of how the document was composed, negotiated and executed. Underlying data can then be consumed and actioned via an API to downstream systems.

Counterparty Manager is a secure document repository which sits at the core of IHS Markit’s regulatory ecosystem including kyc.com, tax, credit and legal entity data. It is used by approximately 80 banks, 900 buyside firms and 6,000 corporates. Through partnerships with SmartDX and ISDA for ISDA Amend, Counterparty Manager serves as an end to end service to digitise, reconcile, amend and negotiate documentation. ISDA Amend enables market participants to address noncleared margin rules with the Self Disclosure and Variation Margin Protocol. SmartDX serves as a flexible solution for managing bilateral amendments.

Guy Harrison, Managing Director, Regulatory and Compliance Services at IHS Markit, said: “New regulatory requirements for non-cleared margin, coupled with shifting deadlines across multiple jurisdictions are posing one of the biggest challenges across the financial services industry. Through our partnership with SmartDX we are automating how CSAs are created, negotiated and managed. This is a crucial element which solves the problem of extracting data from documentation and also meets the needs of bilateral negotiations that cannot be processed via the ISDA Amend Protocol.”

Robin Moody, Global Head of SmartDX, said: “Our valued partnership with IHS Markit has led us to build a service that will help the Capital Markets community to reduce risk and streamline the documentation process. By adding the ISDA 2016 Variation Margin CSA base templates to our SmartDX solution, we have made it simple for the community to consume the service by conducting a simple configuration to make them specific to their organization. Digital documentation processing is no longer a technology of the future, it is ready to use today.”

IHS Markit and Smart Communications, formerly Thunderhead, established its partnership in Q4 2014 to create an electronic service for various derivatives agreements.

For further information and details of how to register, please visit: https://www.smartcommunications.com/events/ (coming up tomorrow 26th of October is the European Customer event, details here: https://www.smartcommunications.com/event/smartdx-360-emea-2016/)