Bank of New York Co. is using the Internet to give investors more access to information on securitized investments.
On a Web site that is open to the public, the bank is providing data on bonds backed by mortgages and other real estate loans for which it serves as trustee.
The data, at www.bnymbs.com, include certificate statements, rates, and loan-level details for the complex bond transactions. Current and prospective investors can use them to determine the value of securities.
Bank of New York had previously delivered the information by mail, fax, dial-up modem, or an automated phone system.
"I can only see it as being beneficial," said Neil McPherson, vice president of asset-backed research at Credit Suisse First Boston. "It makes our lives easier if you can hunt down a servicer report on the fly, rather than making a call and requesting a fax."
"We certainly think this is the beginning of the way things will be handled in the future," said Karen B. Peetz, the banking company's senior vice president in charge of domestic corporate trust services. The $63 billion-asset institution developed the Web site with the help of a consulting firm she declined to name.
She would not specify the site's cost but said she expects the investment to justify itself by increasing revenue from issuers of asset- backed securities and eliminating the expense of sending fax or mail reports.
The company plans to survey issuers and investors on how much money the Web site saves them.
It plans to expand the service to other types of asset-backed securities. Currently, the information is limited to public transactions, but the bank is looking at ways to give investors secure access to data on private transactions.
Some large issuers in the asset-backed market, including Chrysler and Sallie Mae, already publish such data on their Web sites, said Daniel Castro, head of asset-backed research at Merrill Lynch & Co. Centralizing data on a number of issuers could offer even more convenience to some market participants, he said.
Bank of New York's Web site comes after the start-up of similar services designed to increase investor access to information on such bond deals. New York-based Intralinks Inc.'s e-express lets deal trustees put monthly servicing reports on secure Web sites. The trustees can decide which parties get the data and how it will be formatted. Trustees pay a maximum of $25 per month for each user who looks at a site.
Lewtan Technologies of Waltham, Mass., is selling subscriptions to a data base of more than 500 asset-backed transactions that lets users compare the performance of deals over the Internet. Subscriptions to Lewtan's absnet data base cost as much as $1,000 per month, depending on the depth of information received by the subscriber.
