Waters Rankings 2019: Best Credit Risk Solution Provider: Numerix

Judging by its recent track record across WatersTechnology’s various awards programs, Numerix appears to be in a very good place, and the company continues its run by taking home the best credit risk solution award in this year’s Rankings.

The bulk of the New York-based risk specialist’s success is down to its Oneview offering, initially unveiled back in the first quarter of 2016, although the vast library of analytics and models comprising the brains of the platform goes back many years. Satyam Kancharla, chief strategy officer for Numerix, explains that success in this highly competitive market invariably requires calculating an array of complex pricing and risk data, and getting it into the hands of decision-makers when they need it—which increasingly means in real time. However, he says, many of the risk platforms Numerix encounters when working with clients are not capable of handling critical calculations, such as valuation adjustment (XVA) greeks or margin risk measures.

Numerix is currently making a push around automating certain functions supporting structured products and over-the-counter trading, markets that have traditionally been mired by their opaqueness, thin liquidity and manually intensive front-office processes.

“As market demand for structured notes grows in many parts of the world, issuers see a large opportunity to leverage technology to capture gains in the market,” Kancharla says. “However, many issuers are struggling to realize these gains, as their legacy spreadsheets, clunky product structuring processes, and fragmented booking ecosystems are not up to the task. Oneview for Trading, launched earlier this year, enables issuers and distributors to profit from market opportunities by delivering speed, precision and flexibility from structuring and pricing, to hedging, risk analysis and lifecycle management.”

According to Steve O’Hanlon, the firm’s longstanding CEO, “significant” deals won and implemented over the past year include those pertaining to XVA and sell-side front-office analytics as a managed service.