Best evaluated pricing service provider/vendor—CanDeal Data & Analytics

Product overview—CanDeal Data & Analytics Reference Pricing Service

CanDeal Data & Analytics (DNA), a division of Toronto-based CanDeal Group, provides data products and solutions developed in collaboration with a number of Canadian banks and dealers to achieve accuracy and coverage for pricing, security master and analytics for the Canadian fixed-income market. DNA products provide insight and tools to optimize returns and minimize risk in a traditionally opaque and thinly traded market that has become increasingly popular in times of increased volatility.

Secret sauce

CanDeal Group partners with the industry to support Canada’s position in the global financial market. In 2001, CanDeal Markets launched an electronic platform for trading Canadian fixed-income securities. CanDeal DNA Reference Pricing Service was released in 2019. In 2023, CanDeal Benchmark Solutions became the benchmark administrator, with DNA as the calculation agent, for the Canadian risk-free rate, Term Corra. CanDeal solutions address industry and regulatory requirements around know-your-customer and anti-money laundering mandates.

Recent milestones

• Launched price volatility and maximum drawdown impact for various holding periods for historic one-month and three-month periods.
• Launched trade class liquidity indicator for all instruments with a new issue indicator.
• Launched migrations.ml probability of default for Canadian-listed corporate issuers and provinces.

Future objectives

• Post-trade analytics for the universe of Canadian fixed-income securities.
• Package unique datasets to facilitate advanced modeling and back-testing.
• Enhanced frequency of updates.

Why CanDeal DNA won

CanDeal made a bit of history in this year’s Inside Market Data & Inside Reference Data Awards by winning its first-ever category in these awards, following up last year’s success in the corresponding category of the Buy-Side Technology Awards. In doing so, Toronto-based CanDeal unseated one of the most successful and recognizable names in the evaluated pricing industry, Bloomberg. Producing accurate and transparent valuations and prices is no easy feat for providers, even when the assets they are pricing are fairly vanilla and reliable market data is easy to come by. This challenge is infinitely more complex when it comes to thinly traded fixed-income securities such as corporate bonds, for which market data is patchy at best or altogether absent. This is CanDeal’s bread and butter, providing its clients with prices they can trust based on inputs from a number of Canadian banks and dealers. Who would bet against CanDeal doubling up on this win in next year’s awards?