Bloomberg adds Credit Benchmark data

Bloomberg has announced that it will make Credit Benchmark's credit risk data - derived from the risk views of the world's largest financial institutions - available on the Bloomberg Terminal, and also for clients to license the data for an enterprise use case. The company will make this anonymised consensus data available alongside existing credit risk datasets and risk indicators, providing complementary content to help market participants assess the credit quality or risk of default of a counterparty, company or entity, all integrated within their existing workflows.

As the current global economic crisis has illustrated, market participants need readily accessible, timely and transparent data to support active credit assessments and predictive models in fast-moving, volatile markets. Firms are increasingly seeking independent data to validate their own internal counterparty and credit risk assessment and to supplement external ratings data from traditional ratings agencies. The ease of access to Credit Benchmark data over the Bloomberg Terminal can help support risk management, loan and debt underwriting, portfolio optimisation, supply chain risk management, investment idea generation, and as a means of assessing ongoing credit quality.

"The broad coverage provided by Credit Benchmark will allow for easier credit assessment of non-rated companies, as well as provide a complementary point of information to existing analytics on the Bloomberg Terminal," said Mark Flatman, global head of Core Product at Bloomberg. "As the data will be available in all of our workflow tools, it can easily be incorporated as an additional input to the decision process."

In addition to certain consensus data that will be made available to all Bloomberg Terminal subscribers at no additional charge, Bloomberg will offer a premium Credit Benchmark service that provides more granular data for analysis. This premium offering can be delivered over the Bloomberg Terminal (for desktop use), and can also be delivered as a machine-ready data file for enterprise-wide use through Bloomberg's Enterprise Data service.

 

APS Payments to deliver integrated B2B payments for Sage X3 customers

APS Payments, a REPAY company and a provider of omni-channel B2B integrated payment solutions, has announced a technology integration with Sage X3. Customers will now be able to access APS ClickToPay and APSPays Vault within the financial management module of the Sage X3 suite, enabling them to accept credit card or ACH payments of invoices with Level 3 transaction processing. This adds to APS Payments existing integrations with the Sage 100, Sage 300 and Sage 500 solutions.

Sage X3 is purposely designed for medium-sized businesses, delivering financial and operational management that can be customised based on industry specific needs. The integration of APS Payments ClickToPay aims to maximise the platform’s full financial management potential, offering a simple and secure way to have customer invoices submitted from Sage X3 paid directly to accounts receivable. Businesses can send a copy of the invoice via email, allowing customers to open the message and select which payment method they would like to use - ACH or credit card.

The integration is available at no cost, and the firms say that merchants can tokenise credit card data via the APSPays Vault, which is a PCI-DSS compliant gateway with secure data encryption and many reporting tools for reconciliation. Sage X3 users can also store customer payment credentials for future use. Using APS Payments also ensures Level 3 B2B payments processing.

 

BAFT launches Global Payments Industry Council

The Bankers Association for Finance and Trade (BAFT), an international transaction banking association, has announced the formation of its Global Payments Industry Council (GPIC). The GPIC’s primary purpose is to set BAFT’s strategic agenda with respect to global payments and to ensure proper alignment of BAFT’s payments committees and working groups.

The council will be led by chair David Kretz, head of GTS global strategy and payments for Bank of America, and vice-chair Jean-François Mazure, head of cash clearing services for Societe Generale. 

The GPIC’s top three priorities for the next two years include interfacing with key regulators around the globe about the information traveling with funds for transparent payments, ensuring that the same standards are applied to all entities wishing to participate in real-time payments systems, and developing best practices for those real-time payments participants, such as origination, on-boarding an entity to platform, expediting the resolution of exceptions in processing, and effectively leveraging the new technology.

The GPIC is made up of 20 bankers comprised of executives leading the cash management, payments and liquidity business lines of BAFT member organisations. The GPIC’s geographic representation includes Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, MENA, and North America.