Apr 1, 2009
Fort Lee, NJ (USA) – June 10, 2009, DPC DATA, a leading provider of municipal bond disclosure data, today introduced
MuniGUARD
TM, a new suite of surveillance services for investors, advisors and brokers concerned about significant increases in the credit risk of their municipal bond holdings.
MuniGUARD
TM tracks and provides automated notification about various events that impact credit quality. Several levels of the service are available to address subscribers’ specific needs for custom filtering, timeliness and descriptive data.
This new DPC DATA information service answers the market demand for timely credit information, particularly default risk. The most recent DPC DATA research report on municipal disclosures* found that distress-related material event notices jumped from 187 in 2007 to 348 in 2008. More ominously, the number of troubled municipal credits is accelerating, with official distress notices multiplying in 2009 at more than four times the rate for the corresponding period in 2008. Monetary default notices for the month of April 2009 alone numbered more than 120.
“With the downgrading of municipal credit ratings confirming our findings, we believe that the investing community and their service providers have good reason to seek timely information about credit-related filings in the municipal bond market,” said Peter J. Schmitt, CEO of DPC DATA. “
MuniGUARD
TM is designed to answer those concerns, alerting subscribers to distress filings by issuers or obligors, so that the investing community can adjust their credit risk perspective on these offerings.”
The core
MuniGUARD
TM service offers market-wide tracking of any distress-related material event notice that is officially filed. These notice types include the following:
Payment delinquencies
Non-payment, or 'technical' defaults
Unscheduled draws on debt service reserves
Unscheduled draws on credit enhancements
When these notices are filed, subscribers receive instant notifications which will identify the bond offering by issuer name, dated date, issue description, coupon, maturity, and CUSIP (for subscribers with a CUSIP license). The service can also include hyperlinks to the definitive material event notices in the DPC DATA online document repository at www.MuniFILINGS.com. Depending on their needs, subscribers may choose from various delivery options of format, channel or supported trading platforms.
“
MuniGUARD
TM provides a first line of defense against the increasing uncertainty in today’s municipal marketplace,” notes Michael Ruvo, president of DPC DATA. “For investors, it reduces the risk of being caught unawares when municipal credits grow shaky. For their advisors and brokers,
MuniGUARD
TM is a simple and economical means to stay informed and protect their clients from the riskiest elements in the market.”
The next tier of service is
MuniGUARD
TM Portfolio, designed to surveille a specific list of holdings or issues of interest. As with the core
MuniGUARD
TM service, subscribers will receive instantaneous notification whenever a new distress filing is made that relates to any of their listed issues and can choose the optimum delivery mechanism for their purposes.
Being launched in the third quarter is the third-tier service,
MuniGUARD
TM News, a weekly online newsletter listing the new filings of default-related material events.
MuniGUARD
TM News is designed for investors and other market participants who do not require immediate notification, but who want to track municipal securities distress notice trends and conveniently access the definitive notices.
MuniGUARD
TM news will be priced at $59 per year.
For more information about
MuniGUARD
TM,
MuniGUARD
TM Portfolio and
MuniGUARD
TM News, please contact us at 800-996-4747 or
sales@dpcdata.com
About DPC DATA
DPC DATA Inc., founded in 1992, provides securities-related data products and services to more than 600 financial institutions and information intermediaries. In addition to marketing its own portfolio of trademarked financial data products, DPC DATA offers outsourced and offshore services in custom data management and software development. DPC DATA is a privately held firm, headquartered in Fort Lee, NJ. For more information please visit
www.DPCDATA.com.
