Financial Markets and Funds partner Ilene Froom spoke with IQ regarding the International Swaps and Derivatives Association's (ISDA) new tools for electronically documenting trades. Ilene stated, "Much like switching to a smartphone, once market participants start using these platforms to access and negotiate documents, I think they will quickly realize the tremendous benefits of going digital and will not want to go back to paper. MyLibrary and ISDA Create are intuitively designed and easy to use, and they have the important advantage of being both risk-reducing and time saving. Thanks to digitization in this critical area, I believe that paper documents will eventually become a thing of the past in the derivatives market."
Ilene also noted that the improvements for updating will have a great impact on efficiency. "One of the major benefits of MyLibrary is that the definitions can be updated electronically and users can easily compare different versions to determine what has been revised. Rather than having to flip through pages in a hard copy or search through PDFs, which can be cumbersome and time consuming, we now have the advantage of being able to navigate through different digital versions of ISDA publications using the search functionality. To me, that's simply a better and more efficient way to operate in this market."
Ilene had high praise for the breath of options ISDA Create has for derivatives documents. "ISDA Create changes the way that parties can prepare and negotiate derivatives documentation in a helpful way. Once my clients permission me, I can negotiate documentation on their behalf and track the status of different sections, seeing very clearly what has been agreed and what hasn't. Having a negotiation be available online, with open terms and related comments maintained digitally, offers efficiencies over sending markups back and forth by email or paper."
"Digital Revolution," IQ: ISDA Quarterly, April 2023
New York
