Valuation best practice demands that fixed income positions are marked as closely as possible to observable transaction prices. As market conditions evolve, valuation inputs, methodologies and assumptions must be regularly and rigorously assessed to confirm that vendor prices remain appropriate, reliable and representative of prevailing market conditions.
The Fixed Income Evaluations Vendor Benchmark Study provides critical insight into how vendor prices compare across different market environments, liquidity profiles and levels of instrument complexity. By identifying where pricing sources align or diverge, the study facilitates informed decision-making on vendor suitability for marking fixed income portfolios.
Quantifying Price Suitability: Benchmarking Vendor Prices to Market Transactions
The study assesses vendor price suitability using two measures: market alignment, which evaluates how closely vendor prices correspond to observed institutional transaction prices based on the mean absolute difference between the vendor price and transaction price across all trades within each instrument category; and vendor coverage, which measures the proportion of a defined universe of fixed income securities for which each vendor provides a price. Together, these measures provide a balanced assessment of vendor source suitability.
Alignment with transaction prices may vary according to the liquidity, scope and composition of the securities covered. Vendors with broader coverage are more likely to price less frequently traded instruments, where limited observable data may contribute to wider pricing differences. Assessing coverage and alignment together therefore provides a more complete view of vendor suitability by asset class.
Governance Pressure Is Raising the Stakes
Valuation committees, risk teams and regulators are asking harder questions about how prices are derived, how consistent they are with observable market activity and how comprehensively a vendor covers the portfolio. Against a backdrop of heightened scrutiny around valuation transparency, firms cannot afford to treat vendor selection as a one-time exercise or rely on a vendor's self-reported capabilities alone. Structured, evidence-based evaluation has become a governance expectation.
Analyzing Pricing Vendors Across Asset Classes
The study benchmarks vendor prices across seven leading providers and 34 instrument categories against approximately 400,000 institutional transactions from global markets in Q4 2025, covering more than 26,000 unique securities. This year’s findings reinforce a pattern observed in prior editions: vendor prices are generally more closely aligned in liquid asset classes, such as government bonds and investment-grade corporate bonds, while differences become more pronounced in less liquid and structured asset classes.
The study’s results support these findings, demonstrating that vendor suitability should be established through instrument-level evidence and applied within a tiered sourcing framework, rather than assessed across the portfolio in aggregate.
How SS&C Can Support You
As a leading fund administrator, SS&C maintains established relationships with leading pricing vendors to support best-in-class valuation hierarchies and instrument-level price sourcing. This enables pricing to be obtained from the most appropriate vendor for each instrument, helping ensure asset valuations are reliable, defensible and representative of fair market value.
As a leading fund administrator, SS&C leverages established relationships with leading pricing vendors to support the establishment of a granular, instrument-level valuation vendor source selection. This enables the most appropriate pricing source to be selected, supporting asset valuations that are reliable, defensible and good representation of fair market value.
SS&C GlobeOp, which supports over $4 trillion in assets under administration, conducts this benchmark annually to provide that independent evidence.
After ten editions, the message from the data is consistent: vendors cannot be judged on a single headline number. By assessing coverage and alignment together, asset class by asset class, valuation teams can build an evidence-based view of their pricing vendors and focus their oversight where it matters most.
Download the 2026 Fixed Income Evaluations Vendor Benchmark Study for category-level results across all 34 instrument categories, year-over-year comparisons for each provider and coverage statistics.