By John S Hintze
September 20, 2024
Big-bank-backed Octaura and Versana are delivering on their promises for data and operational modernization.
While waves of technological innovation swept through one capital-market segment after another over the last quarter century, trading of syndicated loans remained mired in manual inefficiencies and plagued by weeks-long settlement cycles. Modernization initiatives launched in 2022 by bank-led joint ventures Octaura and Versana are now shifting this $1.39 trillion market into high gear.
Octaura, incubated and co-developed by Citi and Bank of America, set out to usher leveraged loan and structured credit trading onto a sleek digital platform. In June it traded 2.2% of secondary loan trades – out of a total market that the Loan Syndications & Trading Association (LSTA) calculated at $62.7 billion.