Adaje adds ficc.ai integration for tender analysis

Cloud-based software platform Adaje has integrated fintech firm ficc.ai’s pricing algorithms into its modeling software to enhance the platform’s tender offer modeling.

This integration will improve Adaje’s bond modeling suite by creating a more efficient and exact evaluation of tender offer scenarios, the firm said.

Adaje’s platform streamlines bond issuance from concept to post-issuance management and disclosure. The platform eliminates data entry, automates analysis and monitoring, links market participants, and makes data access easier.

The new feature “offers a sophisticated import capability for secondary market pricing at the CUSIP level, with the intelligence to adjust pricing relative to the volume of bonds tendered,” according to a press release.

Users can easily simulate multiple scenarios, including different tender premiums.

Dan Silva, Adaje CEO, and Gil Shulman, ficc.ai CEO and founder, met the Bond Buyer’s California Public Finance Conference in October when they spoke on a panel around technology advances and artificial intelligence in the muni market, Silva said.

While talking afterward, “the wheels started spinning” about partnering with ficc.ai, which Silva describes as “being on the cutting edge” of real-time pricing in the muni market through the latest advances in machine learning.

He said there were several ways Adaje could integrate ficc.ai’s offerings into its system, the most impactful would be tender offering analyses.

Over the past two years, the muni market has seen an exponential rise in tenders, with 2023 being the highest tender volume of record, according to a Barclays strategist report from 2023.

The trend took hold in 2020 and volume rose above $4 billion in both 2021 and 2022 before surging to more than $14 billion in 2023, they said.

“This integration with ficc.ai is precisely what they’ve been waiting for, making the incorporation of secondary pricing into tender analyses as simple as the push of a button,” Silva said.

“We believe the market is primed and ready for an influx of cutting-edge technological solutions and we could not be more pleased to be partnering with Adaje to help make this a reality,” Shulman said.

Ficc.ai provides in real-time more than 1 million muni bonds to its users through machine learning, with its artificial intelligence models continuously analyzing the munis market, allowing dealers, brokers, and investors to trade more efficiently and confidently.

“The things that we can do with [Adaje] are things we cannot do with the current customers, so we hope to add value in a new way,” he noted.

The integration recently went live, and Silva said the early feedback has been positive.

Adaje’s clients primarily use primary pricing estimates, but Silva noted the firm some other preliminary ideas around where secondary pricing may make sense.