A group of loan market participants and technology vendors have banded together to establish the Open Loan Technology Standards Working Group (OLTS) committed to developing a straight-through processing environment for the commercial loan market.
Charter members include Misys Banking Systems, IntraLinks, Trade Settlement, JPMorgan FCS and Bank of New York.
The group's primary goal is the creation of open user-based and system-based standards, that will enable the seamless transfer of data and documents throughout the loan lifecycle.
System-based standards include distribution protocols and APIs for the transmission of loan data between different platforms and parties, as well as authentication protocols that provide uers with a single username and password to sign-on to any part of the information supply chain.
Andy Fieweger, vice president, product management at IntraLinks, says the loan industry's accounting, contact management, online document storage and trade settlement systems have developed independently, creating pockets of efficiency.
"As the loan market grows, the need to connect these areas has never been more important," he adds.
Commenting on the establishment of the working group, Ken Katz, product manager of Loan IQ at Misys Banking Systems, says no single company could successfully offer the benefits of these kinds of standards.
"The OLTS will provide significant business benefit to our customers and the industry as a whole. The results of this collaboration will be worth much more than the sum of its parts."