The new platform is being piloted by three inter-dealer brokers (IDB’s) – GFI Group (GFI), ICAP, and Tullett Prebon – and testing will be completed by the end of June. AffirmXpress will be expanded to include other IDBs next year.
DTCC says that AffirmXpress will address the challenge of immediate trade affirmation of brokered transactions. The platform will automate this process, and give trading counterparties the option to submit their affirmed trades directly to Deriv/SERV, DTCC’s automated matching and confirmation service.
Initially, AffirmXpress will support credit derivatives, including single-name and index credit default swaps (CDS), and tranched index swaps. Future releases will include interest rate and equity derivatives products.
Our goal with AffirmXpress is to encourage automation as early as possible in the trade life cycle to reduce operational risk, while giving customers easy access to the tools they need to deal with the growing volume of credit derivatives trades, said Gina Ghent, DTCC’s vice president of Business Development.