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Interactive Data Corporation, a leading, trusted provider of independent evaluated pricing and reference data services, today announced that it is providing its award-winning* continuous fixed-income evaluated pricing to Northern Trust for use in its Credit-Scored US Corporate Bond Index. This is the latest development in Interactive Data’s wide range of offerings to support the index services industry, and will be followed later in the month by use of continuous evaluated pricing in Northern Trust’s Credit-Scored US Long Corporate Bond Index.
This is the first fixed income index to use continuous evaluated pricing, which means that index values will be disseminated on an intra-day basis. When it was launched by Northern Trust in September 2014, index values were calculated using end of day evaluated prices from Interactive Data. Northern Trust’s FlexSharesSM Credit-Scored US Corporate Bond Index Fund (ETF ticker: SKOR) tracks the Credit-Scored US Corporate Bond Index. Since then, Northern Trust has adopted continuous evaluated pricing for three of its fixed-income ETF iNAVs before choosing to use it for calculating its Credit-Scored US Corporate Bond Index as well.
“Interactive Data has focused its IT and securities-pricing assets to produce continuous evaluated pricing for a broad array of fixed-income securities throughout the day. At Northern Trust, thoughtful innovation drives our FlexShares product strategy, and index informatics play an important role in delivering ETF solutions,” says Peter Ewing, Senior Vice President and Head of Product Development at FlexShares. “When we see promising innovation like Interactive Data’s continuous evaluated pricing, we generally want to take advantage of it.”
“We are pleased with the market’s acceptance and adoption of continuous evaluated prices as the new evaluation standard in a variety of use cases in the front, middle and back offices of the world’s major financial institutions,” Andrew Hausman, President, Interactive Data Pricing and Reference Data said. “For pre-trade price discovery, post-trade performance measurement, and now fixed-income ETF iNAV and index calculations, Interactive Data is demonstrating how continuous evaluated pricing offers increased quality, market transparency, and greater operational efficiency for our clients”, he added.
The use of continuous evaluated pricing can improve the quality of fixed income ETF iNAV calculations. Continuous evaluated pricing also has an Excel® add-in feature which can help provide transparency into the movement of the bonds that comprise a particular ETF. Interactive Data’s Index Services provide independent and objective operational outsourcing, including design support, maintenance, calculation and distribution of indexes across fixed income instruments, currencies, equities and commodities.
*Most Innovative Market Data Project, Inside Market Data Awards 2015.
