Sell-Side Technology Awards 2020: Best Sell-Side Credit Risk Product—Quantifi

For the first time since the Sell-Side Technology Awards were held in 2013, Quantifi takes home the title of best credit risk product, dethroning Numerix, which had won the category each year prior. Quantifi provides support for credit risk and counterparty risk measures for risk functions, such as Basel III, exposures, credit valuation adjustments (CVA), and hedging, using data and insights from credit spreads, default probabilities, loans, bonds and other methods.

Quantifi’s solution runs on a scalable Monte Carlo engine that supports market best practices, including wrong-way risk, sensitivities, stress testing and pre-deal CVA. Clients can run user-related scenarios using graphical user interfaces (GUIs), and then utilize the product’s integrated reporting and drill-down tools to view results at the desired level of detail.

Rohan Douglas, CEO of Quantifi, says the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic combined with residual effects of the European credit crisis have contributed to a long period of tremendous change for the sell side.

“During these times, there’s a huge emphasis on credit exposure [and] on risk management. Clients might need some new analysis quickly. They might need the ability to look at things slightly differently,” Douglas says. “Clients are able to customize their reports and slice the data differently and really look at things any way they want, and they can do that themselves without having to come back and talk to us.”

To help clients meet greater regulatory and cost pressures, as well as adjust to ongoing work-from-home scenarios, Quantifi has helped existing clients migrate part of their risk infrastructures to the cloud, Douglas says. In 2019, the company announced its expanded usage of Microsoft Azure’s cloud service, a key enabler of Quantifi’s microservices architecture, for its cross-asset platform.

The company next sees an opportunity to capitalize on growing demand for data science solutions in capital markets and, specifically, in risk management. As tier-1 banks have begun to build proprietary data science platforms, Douglas hopes the Quantifi Data Science Platform can present a value proposition to tier-2 and tier-3 banks, as well as small- and mid-sized buy-side firms.