The fixed-income data and analytics specialist SOLVE recently launched a new platform that promises to redefine how professionals in the sector operate. The platform aggregates a comprehensive set of historical and real-time data and offers insights that let users make informed decisions.

This move comes on the heels of the recent acquisitions of Advantage Data and Lumesis, solidifying its position in the field of fixed-income data. Finance Magnates spoke with SOLVE's Co-Founder and CEO, Eugene Grinberg, about the company's latest platform and how it can collect ten times more pre-trade data than other available sources.

New SOLVE's Platform to Boost Fixed Income Securities Data

The SOLVE platform is designed to meet the diverse needs of institutions, ranging from identifying new trading opportunities to regulatory compliance. It is powered by Deep Market Insight, a technology that, according to its creators, delivers the most accurate fixed-income data set available. This technology eliminates the need for hundreds of hours spent on data research and analysis, thereby reducing risk and driving growth.

"We leverage Deep Market Insight in two parallel ways – on the one hand, we aggregate quotes from the messages of individual clients to organize their firm's data and then the same mechanism is used to aggregate quotes contributed by our vast network of buy- and sell-side contributing clients," Eugene Grinberg, commented to Finance Magnates.

He also emphasized the platform's ability to meet the specific requirements of large institutional customers, including bankers, underwriters, issuers, and many others. "With the SOLVE Platform in place, institutions can price bonds and securities on a real-time basis with great confidence," the CEO said.

Therefore, the new tool stands out for its approach to data collection. For example, the company offers a range of features, including real-time pre- and post-trade pricing, extensive coverage of illiquid securities, and regulatory compliance solutions for the municipal bond market.

"To provide maximum transparency, we overlay pre-trade quotes with post-trade pricing. When looking to ascertain fair market value of bonds, the best indicator is a materialized trade," Grinberg explained. "However, most securities don't trade daily or even weekly or monthly. Hence any available quotes on these securities may be as good as it gets to establish fair value, or trades and quotes on comparable securities. There is typically a hierarchy as bonds get more and more illiquid."

10 Times More Pre-trade Data than the Competition

The above-mentioned features are made possible by an AI-powered technology, which collects 10 times more pre-trade data than any other source. How is this possible?

"SOLVE's approach to tracking real-time trade chatter is dramatically different from other platforms on the market. While many of our competitors act as 'parsers', which rely on an expectation of consistency between messages, they almost all fall into the same trap – trying to mimic messages with quotes through templates," explained Grinberg.

SOLVE's Ticker solution now seamlessly integrates SOLVE’s Quotes & Composite Pricing Market Data showing Municipal pre-trade quotes alongside historical trade data. https://t.co/nvOaIp3cXA#MunicipalBonds #MarketData #InvestmentAnalysis #PreTradePricingData #TradeQuotes

— SOLVE (@SOLVEfixdincome) October 30, 2023

The company relies on a flexible approach involving natural language processing and machine learning. While parsers would need to know a message's specific rigid format in advance to decode it, SOLVE doesn't need to know what messages look like, allowing the platform to extract quotes more accurately and in real-time.

"Where most parsers fall short is the reality that there is very little consistency in messages between traders, resulting in missed quotes and lots of false positives," Grinberg added.

The SOLVE approach is highly differentiated, which results in significantly higher data coverage. According to Grinberg, one of the company's competitors claims to be seeing "about 100,000 quotes per day" when they see "about 18,000,000 in that same asset class."

SOLVE Acquires Advantage Data, Lumesis and Works on New Products

The acquisitions of Advantage Data and Lumesis have also played a crucial role in enhancing SOLVE's offerings. These companies brought valuable products focused on primary markets, which SOLVE has significantly improved by integrating its own data offerings. Consequently, SOLVE has been able to provide even more value to its clients.

"Both Advantage Data and Lumesis had incredible products focused on Primary Markets and enabling bankers, analysts, underwriters, and syndicates to drive better decision-making. We saw an opportunity to significantly enhance these products with SOLVE's data offerings and by boosting their ability to provide value to clients," Grinberg commented.

In terms of regulatory compliance, the platform offers tools that help institutions adhere to rules and regulations effectively. Quotes are leveraged in various ways, especially for the purposes of "Best Execution," providing a point-in-time view of available data when a transaction is made.

As for the future, SOLVE is working on a few new projects. "There are a number of products in the pipeline that will add even more innovative analytics and visualization solutions to help clients interpret market data and generate P&L opportunities," Grinberg concluded.