State Street launches Venturi to support peer-to-peer financing

By Edlyn Cardoza

State Street Corporation announced the launch of the firm’s new peer-to-peer financing platform, Venturi, specifically designed to connect buy-side firms with new sources of liquidity in the global repo space. Venturi, built through a partnership with FinOptSys, a FinTech focused on the securities financing market, supports trade negotiations, and enhances trade settlement and collateral management, allowing traders to better manage and diversify their counterparty exposure.

“As a result of elevated market volatility and the changing liquidity and rate environment, buy-side firms are increasingly seeking new and diversified sources of financing,” said Gino Timperio, global head of Financing Solutions at State Street. “We are excited to further expand our product suite with the launch of Venturi to help foster the growth of and scale the peer-to-peer marketplace. Akin to our 2005 launch of FICC’s Sponsored Repo Service, which has also provided our clients with critically needed liquidity solutions, we believe Venturi will empower our clients to discover new liquidity pools and make better, data-driven investment decisions. The launch of this platform – designed in large part through extensive development and feedback from our clients – is certainly a very noteworthy milestone for our business and the evolution of our peer-to-peer initiatives.”

Venturi was built to provide clients with the following:

• Increased Efficiency: Users negotiate economic terms of peer repo transactions on Venturi. A program master repo agreement streamlines the documentation process and supports ready scalability. Users may engage with any or all counterparties active on the platform.

• Improved Flexibility: Venturi supports a flexible suite of eligible collateral and margin requirements.

• Seamless Confirmation of State Street’s Guaranty to Repo Buyers: Venturi allows buy-side participants to seamlessly submit and confirm the repo transaction terms satisfy the criteria necessary for State Street to guarantee the repurchase price payment obligations of the repo seller to the repo buyer following a repo seller default. State Street’s short-term credit rating: A+/AA.

• Transparency of trade and margin call settlement: With links to State Street’s Collateral+ Triparty Solution for Peer-to-Peer Repo, Venturi displays confirmed trade matches, collateral valuation and margin calls, and collateral movements between counterparties.

In helping to centralise liquidity pools and enhance transparency, Venturi seeks to open up for buy-side new trading opportunities, lower their transaction costs and improve their returns.