The introduction of a new Bloomberg risk platform gives traders and investors access to new levels of risk management analysis.
Algo Risk runs off Bloomberg's order management systems and marks a significant advance on the previously fairly simple risk management tools available over Bloomberg.
Put together in collaboration with technology provider Algorithmics, it enables users to run analysis on their positions using Bloomberg's desktop hardware and its secure private network. Gail Doolin, in Bloomberg's business development team, says traders and investors have been increasingly demanding the same analytics as their colleagues in risk management.
One of the system's advantages is that it is already filled with data on more than 200,000 individual securities, including government and agency bonds, corporates, high-yield and money market debt, futures, swaps and equities. This figure is set to expand as users ask for more markets and securities to be added to the system. Doolin says structured products such as CMOs and ABS deals are one area Bloomberg expects to grow strongly over the first few months, as detailed data on loan pools gets entered according to client demand.
One banker in fixed-income technology is cautiously upbeat: "Algorithmics offers a good risk management package and this system is likely to be quite attractive, in particular to the second-tier institutions that don't have the resources or inclination to build their own."