Finastra and Coefficient target loan-trading bottlenecks as volumes rise more than 40%

Finastra and Coefficient Markets have announced a technology partnership designed to automate the booking of corporate and syndicated loan trades, targeting the manual processing and data inconsistencies that can slow transactions in the secondary lending market.

The arrangement will connect Coefficient Markets’ EPIC dealer workflow platform directly with Finastra’s Loan IQ lending system through Loan IQ Nexus application programming interfaces.

Under the planned integration, transactions captured in EPIC will be transferred automatically into Loan IQ for booking, reducing the need for trading and operations teams to enter the same information into multiple systems.

The companies said the technology will support individual trades, bulk transactions and portfolio-level bookings.

The announcement comes as secondary loan trading activity increases. Brian Callahan, Chief Executive of Coefficient Markets, said trading activity had grown by more than 40 per cent since 2023, with the number of individual transactions increasing even faster.

That growth has placed greater demands on loan-trading infrastructure, particularly where dealers continue to rely on spreadsheets, manual data transfers and disconnected front-office and servicing platforms.

The commercial problem is not simply processing speed.

Errors introduced when transaction details are transferred between systems can require reconciliation, delay booking and create inconsistencies between trading records and the systems responsible for maintaining loan positions.

For institutions trading syndicated corporate loans, accurate records are important for managing exposures, allocations, servicing obligations and subsequent settlement processes.

The proposed integration is intended to create a more continuous workflow between trade capture and the systems used to administer and service loan assets.

It also builds on existing relationships involving both companies and S&P Global Market Intelligence, which are intended to improve connectivity across the corporate and syndicated lending lifecycle.

However, the companies have not disclosed the number of institutions committed to adopting the integration, implementation timelines, pricing or any independently measured reduction in processing costs.

The announcement therefore represents a planned operational improvement rather than evidence of completed deployment across the market.

For lenders and institutional investors, greater automation could become increasingly important as secondary loan portfolios grow and transaction volumes place additional pressure on operational infrastructure.

The partnership illustrates how technology providers are seeking to improve the infrastructure supporting corporate credit markets without changing the underlying structure or credit risk of the loans being traded.