Platform Release Notes

Data summary is added for the Issuance Monitor

We added a summary row ​at the top to display key ​statistics ​when users are conducting a filtered search. Summary statistics for deal and class include count, volume, the median of WAS, WARF, DS, C/E, MVOC, Spread and DM. Once the filter is refreshed/re-applied, deal and class statistics will be automatically re-calculated per the results.

New filters are added to Dealer Inventory

‘Currency’ and ‘Dealer’ filters are now available.

New updates are available on Issuance Monitor

When in Class View, click on 'Guidance' (pricing) or 'Subscription' (status) columns to see the details.

K-Indicator: a Single Measure for CLO Market Stress

KopenTech has developed a multi-factor CLO Market Stress Indicator, called the K-Indicator, to enable market participants to better monitor and track conditions within the market.  K-Indicator incorporates a variety of metrics that measure secondary CLO market liquidity, transparency, and sentiment. It is derived by the equal-weighted average of the normalized values of five metrics: DNT%, Color%, AAA Average Price Talk Deviation from Color, Same Day BWIC%, and Average Traded AAA Price Level.

Issuance Monitor: "On hold" status is added

Transactions where marketing is delayed by the arranger are now marked with "On Hold" icon.

Issuance Monitor: Ticker field is added

"Ticker" field is added to the transaction details. It is also available as a separate column on the monitor. You can now search the database by Ticker.

BWIC Monitor: "Dealer Statistics" screen is added

Dear statistics are available across all BWICs conducted on the platform. "Dealer Stats" button is now available on all tabs

Issuance Spread Graph:

Common/trend medians and outliers are added

Email Alerts Management:

1. Pop-up with alert management is added 2. Alert time options include Daily (send at 5 pm EST) and Instant 3. Alert options include Selected (via saved filters) transactions or All transactions

Introducing KTX DirectBidding, a new trading protocol.

DirectBidding is a trading protocol where CLO buy-side investors can negotiate directly and trade anonymously. Access CLO liquidity from broker-dealers and the buy-side simultaneously. Send a BWIC to 150+ buy side firms, 30+ broker-dealers, or both in one trading session.

Key functionality:

1. Receive automated, live feedback (Best, Cover, Third, Not in Top 3); 2. Receive guaranteed post-trade color; 3. All bids are final and must be firm for 30 minutes beyond the Bidding Window; 4. All bids are private (settlement agent can see only executed trades);

Settlement:

1. All trades are settled by KopenTech Capital Markets LLC (KTCM), a FINRA-registered introducing broker-dealer and SEC-licensed Alternative Trading System (ATS); 2. All trades are cleared by third party clearing firm(s): MIRAE Asset Securities (USA) Inc. (MIRA);

Issuance Monitor

- Roller deadline is now available for refinancing transactions. Information can be accessed 2 ways:  1) add ‘Roller Deadline’ column to your view and save as default 2) access via advanced filters with an option to search by specific date - Full deal history is now available to refis and resets. To view deal historical transactions, click on  icon next to the deal name and you will be redirected to a new tab with history

Issuance Spreads Dashboard

Issuance Spreads graph shows new issue spreads over the last 12 months. Users may filter by transaction type, coupon, rating, collateral type, short vs long-date deals or currency. Users can also adjust the timeframe settings – week, month, quarter, or year. Spreads are shown over LIBOR base rate until December 31, 2021 and over SOFR thereafter. 

EU Compliant Deals Dashboard

EU Compliant Deals graph shows ​the breakdown of EU Compliant deals as a % of BSL CLO​s by month, quarter or year. Users can also filter by transaction type – new issue, refi or reset.

Short & Long-Dated Issuance Dashboard

Short & Long-Dated Issuance graph shows the trend by month, quarter or year. Short-dated deals are ​classified as those with a non-call period of 0-1.5 years and ​reinvestment period of 0-3.5 years. User​s can also adjust the view by filtering the ​graph based on transaction type.

BWIC Monitor

- Same-day BWICs are now marked with special icon on BWIC Monitor. - ​Users now have ability to filter BWICs by position size.

Portfolio

Dealer Inventory column is added to the Portfolio page. Click View link in the Inventory column to see which bonds from the portfolio are offered in dealer’s inventory.

Seller Admin

- Client’s admins now have access to export historical BWICs for internal or compliance purposes. - Client’s admins ​​now have the option to send a notification to company’s viewers of BWICs they post.

Primary Issuance Dashboard Gets Reimagined

Graphs are now available on a separate tab of ‘Issuance Monitor’. To view them, simply click the ‘Dashboard’ tab. Graphs are enabled with interactive setup and toggles.

New Graphs are added to the Primary Issuance Dashboard

1. ESG Deals % in New Issue shows monthly % breakdown of ESG deals in the market. Users can specify timeframe. 2. Static Deals: table lists static deals. Users can select YTD or a specific year. 3. Debut Deals: table lists new managers entering CLO market. Users can select YTD or a specific year.

Issuance Monitor

Syndicate contact information is moved to the top of the transaction details page. Click on Syndicate button to view details.

Manager and Arranger quick filters are added to the transaction details page. Just click on an icon next to the manager or arranger name and get redirected to all active & historical transactions.

BWIC Dashboard

For users who have Portfolios set up, portfolio securities appearing in Dealer Inventory are listed in a separate widget on Dashboard page. Turn on BWIC & Dealer Inventory alerts to stay tuned on activity in your portfolio.

Dealer Inventory

Currency column is added to the Dealer Inventory page.

Other

New 'Options' button is available in security panel. Quickly view whether security is on a BWIC or in a dealer’s inventory.

Added additional Debut CLO filter for managers on Issuance Monitor.

Added Static Deal filter and column on Issuance Monitor.

Customized email alerts are now available for primary market activity. To receive alerts, a user must have saved filters on Issuance Monitor. Alerts would follow the saved criteria. 

Within Dealers Inventory, a column for C/E is now featured.

Securities available in Dealer’s Inventory are now marked on BWIC monitor and vice versa.

AAA Price Talk and Color Graph

This graph plots monthly average AAA post-trade color and monthly average Px talk, including the range of Px talk within each month. Wider ranges of Px talk show that broker-dealers had differing predictions of the traded price. Small differences imply high forecasting accuracy by broker dealers, while large differences indicate fast moving market conditions with less forecasting ability.

Portfolio Alerts on Dealer’s Inventory

Receive instantaneous portfolio alert once security in your portfolio is added, updated or traded from Dealer Inventory. This feature is turned on automatically. Users can manage Alerts from 2 places: Portfolio or Notifications section of the Account Settings.

Additional Filtering for Dashboard Widgets

Filters by currency and rating are now available for Biggest Movers and Most Traded Bonds widgets on Dashboard.

Manager’s Debut CLO

Manager’s debut CLO are now marked with ‘Debut’ label on Issuance Monitor page. Find out new CLO Managers entering the CLO universe.

Saving filters on Issuance Monitor

Users can now save multiple custom filters on Issuance Monitor. Enter ranges or min/max values on Issuance Monitor’s fields to get a set of transactions that meet your parameters, then click save and name your filter. Set a default filter to see every time you log back into the system.

BWIC Email Alerts

Users can set up customized alerts based on currency, ratings and BWIC notional size. To set up an alert, click on the Email Preferences button on the BWIC Monitor page or open Profile > Notifications. When relevant boxes are checked, users receive a daily email notification when qualified securities are posted on BWICs. 

SOFR Filter

Transactions on Issuance Monitor now include a filter for SOFR. If selected, it will show transactions that have at least one SOFR-based tranche. Click the +MORE button to select among available filters.   

New Columns Added

Deal Maturity, First Payment Date, Intex information and Documents are now available on Issuance Monitor. To add columns, click the Columns button on the far top right, and select the columns from the list; adjust column order if needed. 

Count of Bids Per Security

BWIC Sellers can benefit from seeing the count of bids per security on the BWIC bidding page. This gives sellers a quick insight into the demand per bond. To see individual bids, click the all bids button. 

Admins can Export User History Logins

Admin users now can export the history of user logins. Additionally, when a user is given Admin credentials, they will receive an email notification.

Find ESG Deals

Issuance Monitor now contains information regarding CLOs with Environmental, Social and/or Governance (ESG) language in the Indenture. Filter by ESG eligibility or read ESG language on the transaction details page.

New Filter for X -tranches and Junior AAAs

Junior AAA and X tranches are now in separate from regular AAAs on Issuance Monitor. This allows users to have cleaner data when searching for AAA spreads and to include or exclude these tranches when creating a custom filter.

Filterable Credit Enhancement (C/E)

The C/E % filter can be used as a range or a minimum if only lower bound is specified. This field helps investors assess the subordination of each tranche and can be very useful in conjunction with the Rating filter and the Class View. To access this feature, toggle on Class View, then select C/E (%) from the +MORE list of available filters.

Filterable Market Value Overcollateralization (MVOC)

The MVOC filter takes into account the market value of the collateral and can be particularly useful for seasoned deals, such as refis and resets. First, toggle Class View, then click +MORE to select MVOC as an available filter.

Intex Deal Information

Intex File name is now displayed at the top of the Transaction Overview page. Click on the Intex icon located on the top right corner.

Additional Presets for Closing and Pricing Date Filters

Pricing and Closing Date columns now have frequently used preset filtering options, such as this/last week, this/last month and rolling 1/3/6 months. To access, click +MORE and select Closing Date and/or Pricing Date from the list of columns, then filter for the time you are interested in.

Improved Default Sorting Settings of Primary Pipeline

By default, active transactions that are still accepting orders are located at the top of Issuance Monitor. These transactions are now sorted by the Last Updated date. Priced and closed transactions are sorted by the closing date from newest to oldest.

Admin Role

KopenTech subscribers now have 3 user types available: Administrator (Admin), Seller, Viewer. Companies may have multiple admin users but must have at least one. Admin role can be combined with Trader or Viewer role. Admin users can manage users and trading relationships, as well as set trading limits.

Customizable Columns

Within Issuance Monitor, users can add/remove columns with relevant information and to save these views for future use. Column customization is available for both Deal View (entire CLO capital structure) and Class View (tranche-specific information).

Issuance Data Visualized

Dashboard now includes data from the Issuance Monitor, including 1) Top 10 Arrangers, 2) Top 10 Issuers and 3) customizable volume/deal count graph for new issue, refi and reset transactions. Data goes back to 2016.

Last Updated field added

Issuance Monitor has a Last Updated field for active and priced transactions. Users can hover over the date to view timing of the most recent update.

Deals marked as NEW

Any transactions that have just posted to Issuance Monitor will be indicated as NEW for the first 24 hours.

EU compliance filter

Issuance Monitor now has a filter for transactions that are EU Compliant.

Issuance Monitor filters now have an improved layout. Most frequently used filters are available on the main screen. Additional, more advanced filters are available by clicking the +MORE button.

On Dashboard, the Daily Trade Analytics table now has definitions for Color%, Color and Px Talk. Additionally, users can click on Rules to see how KopenTech normalizes industry ranges of Color and Px Talk (e.g. 99LM) to a numerical value (e.g. 99.35).

Overbidding alert

Once a BWIC Seller has pressed the “trade” button and proceeded to the selling screen, they will receive a pop-up notification when broker-dealers bid over themselves. A drop-down with both prices will be displayed along with a notification suggesting the Seller can trade at the lower price.

Tied for best alert

Once a BWIC Seller has pressed the “trade” button and proceeded to a selling screen, they will receive a pop-up notification when there are multiple bidders who are tied for the best bid. The names of tied broker-dealers are displayed, then BWIC Sellers are given a choice to pick with whom they want to trade from the drop-down window. Canceling out of this screen and returning to the bidding window provides the option to proceed with bidding.

What’s New pop-up

Upon login to the platform, all users will receive a pop-up notification detailing the newly released features.

The Auto-Feedback feature received two improvements. First, Auto-Feedback now has the option of replying to the first place bidder with “Best.” Second, the Auto-Feedback panel can be expanded to view different options for feedback.

The Company panel is now more consistent across the entire platform. It was also given a convenient layout with contact information available for all registered users.

Within the Portfolio page, users can now view historical Px talk information in a graph.

Advanced filtering on the Issuance Monitor page

Users now can filter out the transactions by 5 default filters: Manager, Arranger, Type, Status and Rating; and 9 additional filters: Currency, Pricing Date, Closing Date, Non-Call End, RI End, WAS, WARF, DS, Collateral Type and AMR Eligibility. Users can combine different filters together for more granular results. Each filter is adjusted for the specific data type, so users can quickly find any data. For example, managers or arrangers can be easily found from the list with the built-in search. Time periods can be filtered by dates, years or preset ranges.

Dealer Inventory

Users are now able to view inventory from multiple broker-dealers, all organized in a consistent format and updated in real-time. Also included are historical Px talk and color information on dealer inventory, located in one platform and sharable between team members. This also allows users to sort, search and filter dealer inventory, as well as add bonds from dealer’s inventory to their portfolio. In a future release, users can toggle on email alerts to receive a notification when bonds in their Portfolio are sold by dealers.

Ability to add security to My Portfolio from Security panel across the system

Users can now add security to their Portfolio through the “Add to Portfolio” button. This allows users to add individual bonds to their portfolio throughout the entire platform without the need to type in tickers or unique identifiers.

The BWIC Monitor now has "All", "Buy" and "Sell" tabs for Sellers and "All", "My" tabs for Broker-Dealers for easier navigation.

With one click, Sellers can view Dealers who have submitted bids.

During a BWIC, Sellers can search the Dealer's panel to easily view bids from specific broker-dealers.

When the Seller clicks on a ticker during a BWIC, all bids tab is shown by default.

Standardized Blast Messages to bidders

Save time by sending Blast Messages to all bidders. BWIC Reminder: “Please submit your bid or indicate that you pass”. Send this message as a reminder to those invited who did not submit a bid. Final Improvement Request: “Please submit your final level”. Choose to send to Top 3, Top 5 or All. Depending on the protocol, send this message to the appropriate number of bidders to conclude your BWIC.

Bank salespeople have a dedicated Viewer role/tools

KopenTech has features that are helpful for salespeople to manage orders and track market data: - AMR Refinancings - Electronic BWIC 
Trading - Issuance Monitor - CLO Inventory - Market Monitoring KopenTech AMR has a built-in order management system that helps salespeople collect client bids in preparation for bidding in AMR auctions. KopenTech BWIC has helpful market monitoring features including online BWIC bidding monitoring as well as primary and secondary market surveillance features.

The improved bidding screen layout allows customization, faster data entry, autosaving and ability to mark dealers as Favorites.

Improved auto-feedback functionality automating BWIC status updates and significantly reducing communication efforts.

Improved flow for Bid On Behalf and Live Bidding for Sellers.

Sellers now have the ability to see their favorite broker-dealers on New BWIC Step 3 and Dealers pages.

Additional roles for broker-dealers and asset managers.

New Table: Biggest Movers

The Biggest Movers table shows the largest price changes from prior traded levels over the last 30 days. This table is updated daily at 6:00 PM EST and excludes all DNT’d securities.

CLO Issuance Monitor

The Issuance Monitor is a centralized portal for all primary activity: new issues, refis and resets. With this portal, our objective is to have a centralized location and standardized approach to collecting deal information. When you arrive on the Issuance Monitor page, you’ll immediately see similar filters to the BWIC monitor. Advanced filtering tools are available to search for specific transaction types, ratings, reinvestment, or non-call periods along with 15 other portfolio characteristics. Investors will be able to access granular deal details in five intuitive sections.

New Graph: Px Talk Deviation from Color - Px Talk Accuracy Barometer

Average Px Talk Deviation from Color (PTDC) is a measure of aggregate broker-dealer Px Talk accuracy. For each trade where color is provided, we find the absolute error between the actual color price and the average Px Talk value across dealers. The higher the value, the less accurate dealers are in predicting actual prices at that point in time. The higher the error value, the less liquid the market.

New Table: Most Traded Bonds

The Most Traded Bonds table shows which tickers have been traded the most in the past 30 days. This table is updated daily at 6:00 PM EST.

New Graph: Security Lookup: Px Talk & Color Dispersion

This interactive security look-up feature allows investors to view pricing data over a customized length of time. Over six years of historical data are available for analysis, visualization and download.

New Graph: DNT % - Barometer of Demand

The Did Not Trade (DNT) rate is a widely-used measure of demand. It is the percentage of bonds that were sent out on BWICs and tagged DNT, meaning "did not trade," or no trade agreement was reached. The higher the value, the less implied liquidity exists in the market.

New Graph: BWICs as % of TRACE

The graph shows BWICs as a percentage of the TRACE reported volume broken down by IG and HY.

New Graph: Trading Volume Barometers

FINRA’s TRACE database is comprised of daily BWIC trades as well as bilateral trading activity broken down between IG and HY.

New Graph: TRACE Broker-Dealer Net Flow

TRACE reports the daily volumes of how much customers buy and sell from broker-dealers in terms of positive or negative dealer net flow. When dealers have a positive net flow, they purchase more bonds from customers vs. what they sell and vice versa.

Seller can increase or decrease Bids on Behalf.

New Graph: Price Ranges by Rating

The Price Levels graph shows price dispersion by rating. Hover for full quartile statistics.

New table: Dealers Stats (for Sellers on the My BWICs page)

The Dealers Stats page is a comprehensive overview of participation from broker-dealers on your BWICs including px talk, improvement patterns and bids by rating.

Evaluate dealer bidding across BWIC history

Get dealer performance statistics at your fingertips including participation rates, px talk frequency and accuracy as well as trading/winning statistics.

Multi-Factor Authentication

Users now have the ability to log in to KopenTech BWIC using Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA).

New Graph: Daily Trade Analysis

See statistics from today’s BWIC trading session, including posted and traded volume, security count, DNT rates and Color rates. Quickly compare Px Talk and Color across ratings.

New Graph: Same-day BWIC % - Stability Barometer

The Same-day BWIC Rate is the percentage of bonds that were announced for sale to investors and traded on the same day via BWIC. Most BWICs are announced 48 hours in advance to allow bidders enough time to research the bonds in question. It can be used as more of an abstract measure of market sentiment, with a higher value indicating more stress.

Bidding Auto-Feedback

Improve BWIC efficiently: automate feedback to dealers. Toggle on/off any time during BWIC. Notify platform dealers via system messages and off-platform dealers via email.

New Graph: Color % - Transparency Barometer

The Color Rate graph represents the percentage of BWIC trades where price information is provided in the post-trade color. It can be used as a measure of market transparency, with higher values indicating more transparency.

Security details combined in a side panel

Open the security panel from a portfolio or individual BWIC page, view Fitch/S&P ratings, export historical trades and download deal docs.

Email alerts

Enable a wide range of email alerts in Account Settings. Daily market recap and alerts by ratings are now available.

Within the Address Book and BWIC Participants tab, Sellers can invite to join all users in one click.

New BWIC Selling Protocol – Live Bidding

Live Bidding is an innovative method of conducting a BWIC. Historically, CLO BWICs have been conducted in a first-price sealed-bid auction format in which: - Bidders submit sealed bids directly to the seller - None of the participants know one another‘s bids - The top bidder pays the submitted price Live Bidding is a methodology that allows a Seller to conduct a 2-stage BWIC. The first stage is like a normal BWIC but for only 30 minutes. At the end of that 30 minutes, the top 3 bidders on each listing will be promoted to a second round in which the current best price is shown to all 3 bidders. When a new high price is submitted, the other 2 dealers have 5 minutes to improve upon it. If 5 minutes time expires with no additional bids, the highest submitted bid wins the bond.

Export data on Blotter page to Excel.

Broker-dealers can invite buyside clients.

New Graph: Scheduled BWICs

The scheduled BWICS bar graph displays upcoming BWICs, broken out by ratings and updated in real-time. Filtering by currency is available.

New Graph: Scheduled BWICs Heatmap

Our heatmap enables investors to visualize upcoming BWICs through colored tiles. The tiles are colored more intensely when larger notional is scheduled and the number of securities is displayed next to volume. The heatmap helps both buyers and sellers to schedule their participation. Sellers can avoid busy periods to get better participation from broker-dealers.

Historical Data for Your Securities

Simplify your month-end pricing with historical data stored in one centralized place.

Portfolio Alerts

Get notified when securities from your portfolio are on an upcoming BWIC. Toggle on an alert for all portfolios or for a specific portfolio.

New Table: My Scheduled BWICs

My BWICS shows any BWICs you scheduled as a seller. My Bids shows any bids you placed on the upcoming
BWICs via KopenTech’s multi-dealer bidding platform.

Invite Broker-Dealers

Invite Broker-Dealers with whom you trade to join the KopenTech BWIC platform.

Add Additional Traders

Add additional traders from your firm instantly.

Add Company Contacts

Add your ops, compliance, billing, and other company contacts for streamlined communication.

Visual historical prices

View combined Price Talk, Trade Color and Implied Levels from DNT trades in one price graph.

Zoom in on the details

Hover over plots to see specific data points.

Off-Platform Dealers

Bid-on-behalf feature allows you to add bids for off-platform dealers. Add off-platform bids in 3 steps: - Step 1: Select Broker-Dealer - Step 2: Enter bid(s) - Step 3: Confirm bid(s)