Exploring a pivotal year for the loan market – And for ClearPar

2024 was another landmark year for the loan market, presenting both challenges and opportunities for significant change. Primary loan volumes surged, secondary trading activity reached record highs, and private credit activity and interest grew exponentially. The era of illiquidity is behind us; the loan markets are thriving, but there remains a critical need to further reduce settlement times.

 Market trends are increasingly shaping our product roadmap, ensuring we deliver tools and innovate in ways that support our clients' pursuit of efficiency and scalability amidst volume volatility, as along with the daily challenges and interactions associated with settlement. In 2024, we introduced several major new features and functionalities across our Loan Platforms product ecosystem, catering to both the broadly syndicated and private credit markets.

A client-driven product roadmap

The diverse ClearPar client base—over 1,000 dealers, asset managers, agents, custodians, and borrowers—provides valuable insights into the challenges facing the market. By engaging regularly with clients, trade associations, and power users, as well as analyzing platform usage, we prioritize initiatives that address significant challenges and deliver maximum value.

In 2024, we launched key functionalities, including Penny Change for automating minor commitment amount changes on trades, Consent Request automation for proactive buyer-borrower consent, disqualified (DQ) lender lists for agents, and the integration of Loan Reconciliation with ClearPar to support data driven decisions through lender position information. We also introduced enhancements to support private credit trades, with volumes growing exponentially in Q4.

Innovating the user experience

One of our most significant projects was the complete redesign and migration of all users to the latest ClearPar user interface – the consolidated Loan Platforms site. This multi-year journey exemplifies how client feedback has driven product development.

As we finalized the migration, we enhanced the Borrower Experience, introduced trade list search and save criteria, andstreamlined workflows for Party and Agent views. We successfully reduced clicks and enabled task completion from a single view, incorporating user-defined customization. Additionally, we completed the ClearPar self-admin user function, empowering 'admins' to manage user access rights without submitting forms.

Integrations and data-delivery

In 2024, our product and implementation teams oversaw a record number of client integration projects, with over 200 institutions now electronically integrated. Loan Processor, our cloud-hosted middleware tool used in conjunction with LoanIQ, went live for multiple clients. As dealers and agents integrate with ClearPar and Loan Reconciliation, Loan Processor fast-tracks client goals by supporting real-time data flows and settlement capabilities between systems in an ‘off the shelf’ solution.     

The launch of MultiStream messaging enables institutions to integrate with ClearPar and receive real-time event-based trade data across multiple locations or systems. Custodian Messaging has reached new heights, allowing providers to consume trade and pricing document data, enhancing payment automation.

Modernizing entity data management and validations

ADFlow facilitated a significant market-wide shift towards digitally maintained and client-verified entity data, managing around 15k active entities in ClearPar and 28k unique wire instruction sets via our audited online portal. To support ADFlow’s adoption, we added capabilities such as simultaneous ADF and SSI approval, ADF templates, SSI event types, and UX updates to simplifyonboarding.

ADFlow has enabled major dealers and agents to eliminate callbacks for verifying correct SSIs before remitting payments. In 2024, we also saw institutions leverage ADFlow messaging, automatically consuming standard ADF data as counterparties and lenders updated their details.

Read more about this in our September blog. 

Innovations in insight generation

As trading volumes grow and scrutiny on settlement times increases, generating insights from data becomes essential. This past year, we added new reports and datasets for buyside clients through our Premium Reporting module, a self-service reporting tool. In 2025 this will evolve with a ClearPar-centric data visualization and intelligence tool available for Lender and Agent personas.

2025: The road ahead of loan market innovation

Building on our successes, our 2025 roadmap is our most ambitious to date. Key areas of focus will include a new Participation settlement workflow, enhanced data visualization capabilities, final integration between ClearPar and Tax Utility, and more persona-driven workflow customization.

Participations and expedited settlement

The introduction of a comprehensive Participation workflow for LSTA trades- including Master Participations, standard dashboards, bulk execution of trades that are part of a master participation agreement, and market standard document generation, including the master schedule- will significantly impact the year ahead. Smart algorithms will evaluate the potential for standard settlement during the participation process, updating the participation dashboard in real time. What was once a fragmented and manual process will transform into a digital experience, supporting expedited settlements and seamless transfer documents or trade elevation.

Workflow Automation and User Experience

In a post legacy ClearPar UI era, we will focus on further streamlining and automating settlement workflows. This includes facility restructures, enhanced use of Loan Reconciliation positions, and more Agent-Borrower interactions. The upcoming Deemed Consent feature will streamline manual processes and support faster settlements. We will also expand ClearPar’s self-admin capabilities to include account and entity-level settings.

Innovation via integrations and data access

As client demand grows, we continue to expand available message types and provide future-ready architecture. Our focus will also include internal integrations, combining ClearPar and Tax Utility as a single solution for exchanging and validating tax documents. Know Your Customer (KYC) will also be a priority. The ability to access and query your own ClearPar trade data, along with custom reports and visualizations, will form a new Loan Platforms reporting solution,providing clients access with unprecedented datasets and analytical capabilities.

Supporting greater settlement efficiency

All the areas we’ve highlighted contribute to ourshared goal of enhancing settlement efficiency and liquidity. With increasing volumes and scrutiny on average settlement times, our partnership with clients and industry associations has never been more vital. In 2024, Secondary Par T+ times fell by 11% (LMA) and 5% (LSTA), with clients reporting positive impacts from our new functionalities and user experience. We anticipate 2025 willbuild on these successes.  

If you're an existing ClearPar client or utilize any of the Loan Platforms solutions, please contact your client manager for a tour of the new features available to you. If you're not yet a client, please contact us here for a demo and to learn more.

What’s up next?

2024 was a record year for trade volumes, with nearly 2 million settled allocations managed through ClearPar, and 9 trillion of notional accessible to lenders through Loan Reconciliation (position validation). Stay tuned for our upcoming article reviewing 2024 loan market volumes and trends, comparing them to previous years, and providing insights into the latest settlement time trends.

For a broader update on our Lending Solutions innovations and our vision for 2025, please access the blog here.