Xavier Deschamps, general Manager, global head of sales and marketing at Pricing Partners talks to Innovative Investor about its brand new launch into the Asian markets.

Innovative Investor - What is Pricing Partners? Who uses your services and why?

Xavier Deschamps - Pricing Partners is a fast growing international firm that provides structured product and derivatives pricing as well as risk analytic tools along with an independent revaluation service on vanilla to the most complex derivatives products.

Founded in 2005 by a team of former trading floor industry professionals with experience in some of the most prestigious investment banks, Pricing Partners has become a major player in both pricing models and independent valuation of complex financial products. Its solutions cover all major assets classes (interest rates, fixed income, equity, inflation, credit, foreign exchange, commodities, variable annuities and hybrid products).

Innovative Investor - Who are your typical clients?

Xavier Deschamps - The solutions can be used by investment banks, asset management firms, hedge funds, corporations, pension funds, fund administrators and audit firms. Pricing Partners masters the chain of valuation and develops its own pricing library and valuation platform. Its intrinsic knowledge and understanding of the pricing methodologies/models enable its clients to get very accurate and reliable valuation on their derivatives books.

Innovative Investor - Having signed a distribution agreement in Hong Kong, why did you choose to open your new regional office in Singapore at this time?

Xavier Deschamps - Being implemented as part of our 2010 Asian strategy, we've initially tied up a distribution partnership with a company based in Hong Kong. As Singapore and Hong Kong look to us the main financial centres in Asia, we have decided to open Pricing Partners office in Singapore in order to have a second location and provide permanent local support.

Innovative Investor - What is the intention of the launch and which Asian markets are you targeting in particular?

Xavier Deschamps Pricing Partners intents to launch Price-it Library and Price-it Online solutions to provide accurate and transparent pricing and valuation on derivatives products. We intent to focus on the main two financial hubs, Hong Kong and Singapore along with other emerging markets like India and China.

Innovative Investor - Rosh K Rai has recently joined Pricing Partners as senior sales manager to launch your Asian operation through a new office in Singapore. When did he join and what is his background?

Xavier Deschamps - Rosh has been with Pricing Partners for just over a month now as a senior sales manager. Prior to working with Pricing Partners, he worked for a leading derivatives solution firm and Thomson Reuters Financial in both Hong Kong and Singapore where he developed the business throughout the Asia Pacific region. We are currently looking for a new resource for the Asian team that will take care of valuation and consulting services.

Innovative Investor - What are the main issues as you see it for firms in Asia in 2010 as regards derivatives and structured products?

Xavier Deschamps - Accuracy and transparency on local derivatives.

Innovative Investor - How does Price-it Online work? And how can it describe the complexity of any structured product?

Xavier Deschamps - Price-it Online is an innovative Internet based independent valuation service. This platform has the same product coverage and functionality as Price-it Library and makes independent valuation a very simple process. It provides a high degree of transparency with the details of the computation through the full audit of the valuation process, modeling choices, calibrated model parameters, product cash flows and visualization of market data. Clients provide their termsheets and receive in return regular valuation with customised reports.

Clients can easily connect to the valuation website with a login and password and audit the valuation, with all details about the trade description, modelling choice and market data used. They can also download archived valuation reports on different formats or search for an historical price. Portfolio set up can be done alternatively by the client or by the Pricing Partners valuation team.