ISDA Selects Kinetix and Linklaters to Develop Documentation User Platform
The International Swaps and Derivatives Association, Inc. (ISDA) has today announced that Kinetix Trading Solutions and Linklaters have been selected to develop a user platform that will allow market participants to access ISDA documentation in electronic form with enhanced navigation and other features.
Kinetix, a financial technology company specializing in artificial-intelligence-driven trade management and compliance software, and Linklaters >Nakhoda were selected following a request for quotations issued in June 2020 for the development of a user-friendly, state-of-the-art platform that will enable industry participants to more easily navigate and use ISDA’s documentation.
The first documents for delivery through this new platform will be the forthcoming 2021 ISDA Interest Rate Derivatives Definitions and the ISDA 2002 Master Agreement. Other documentation will be available in electronic form via the platform over time, in line with ISDA’s strategy to facilitate greater automation and efficiency in derivatives markets. Linklaters is advising on the new 2021 ISDA Interest Rate Derivatives Definitions that are due for launch later this year. By publishing them via the user platform, instead of in traditional paper and PDF form, this will be ISDA’s first natively digital definitional booklet. This will enable ISDA to amend and restate the definitions in full each time they are updated, avoiding the need for parties to manually assemble the definitional booklet plus various supplements in order to determine the terms of each trade at the time of execution. Users will also be able to quickly and easily compare different versions of the definitions as they evolve over time, use hyperlinked terms within the text to move to other parts of the document, and download or print.
Deepak Sitlani, Derivatives Partner at Linklaters commented:
"It is increasingly evident that the way users interact with legal documents is constantly evolving and we need to have an eye towards technology solutions to enable that evolution. The digitization of the new 2021 ISDA Interest Rate Derivatives Definitions is a prime example of this approach. It brings together ISDA’s forward thinking digital strategy with Linklaters’ industry and legal expertise, Linklaters > Nakhoda’s product design expertise and Kinetix’s technical expertise. Together this has enabled us to design a product which brings legal technology to life in an intuitive way that lawyers will use."
Paul Puskuldjian, COO at Kinetix Trading Solutions, adds:
"The industry is ready for digitization across the various facets of Derivative processing. We are excited to team up with Linklaters on this initiative and leverage our NLP AI-driven software to make derivatives documentation digitally enabled. We see this as a crucial milestone on the path to fully automated pre and post trade derivative processing."
Last month, ISDA announced that ISDA and Linklaters >Nakhoda have made the ISDA Master Agreement digitally available for the first time via ISDA Create, an online documentation negotiation tool. Making the Master Agreement available in electronic form on the user platform is an important complementary step to that initiative.
The documentation user platform is scheduled for launch in the second quarter of 2021.
