Holidays: FAQ

They arise from the juxtaposition of three facts:

• We have a vast installed base, which includes virtually every major bank and securities firm in the world, as well as many asset managers and other major players in the financial markets.
• These firms use electronic trade confirmation systems for very large numbers of trades.
• It is expensive and time-consuming to resolve confirmation discrepancies.

When a firm that uses our data confirms a trade with a counterparty that does not, it risks an expensive date discrepancy. However, if both firms use our data, the risk of such discrepancies disappears, as do the associated costs. Our vast installed base means that a firm that starts using our data will realize substantial operational savings. As we add new customers, existing ones benefit commensurately.

It depends on your business needs, because we can give you any window you want. The question to ask is, “At any point in time, what is the furthest into the future that I need to go?” For example, if you do 10-year interest rate swaps, you would probably want a 10 or 11-year window. On the other hand, if you do equity options with a life of up to three months, then a window of 100 or 110 days should suffice.

Keep in mind that, as part of our service, we shift your window of time forward to protect against end-date creep. We can implement this shift using a variety of schedules, but the most common are annually, quarterly, monthly, or semi-monthly.

Immediately a change has been identified and confirmed.

You will receive two types of delivery:

1. Event-driven, triggered by data changes.
2. Pre-scheduled, to protect against end-date creep.

If you license every financial center, you should expect several event-driven deliveries on busy days. At other times, there may be a gap of several days between deliveries.

For customers who license a subset of centers, event-driven deliveries will be less frequent. For example, a customer with 75 random centers can expect an average of two to three event-driven deliveries per month, although in any single month there may be as few as zero, or as many as seven or eight.

Gathering and monitoring the data for a given financial center is complex. There are three main components:

• The underlying calendar (Gregorian, Chinese, Hebrew, etc).
• The holidays as predicted by the center itself.
• The impact of external factors (legislation, government decision, etc).

Our data represents a prediction of an uncertain future out to the year 2200. Few “official” sources publish holidays much beyond the next year or two. For periods beyond these “official” windows, we project current practice and incorporate likely future changes. All the data reflects our assessment of the most likely outcome for each day.

For example, we list the Spring Bank Holiday as a holiday for London banks on May 29, 2017. The probability that this day will actually be a holiday is virtually 100%.

We also list May 31 of 2117 as a London bank holiday, yet the probability that it will actually be a holiday is less than 100%. Reasonable people will disagree as to what that probability might be. However, the standard that we employ is to assess the most likely outcome for that day. So, despite a probability of below 100%, we list that day as a holiday because that is the most likely outcome.

It would not be advisable unless all the financial centers that you currently receive, as well as any you might order in the future, employ a Saturday-Sunday weekend.

Keep in mind that many countries do not employ a Saturday-Sunday weekend. Even countries that normally do so sometimes turn one of these days into a working day. Also, centers periodically adopt a new weekend pattern.

To qualify as a holiday, a center must be closed for the entire day. If a center is open for even just a few minutes, that day is not a holiday. For detailed data pertaining to half-days and the operating times of exchanges, use our Trading Hours data.

Yes. We can provide you with a mapping file that links the ISO currency codes with our center codes.

We will develop the necessary data at no extra charge.

We can create synthetic centers that are combinations of existing centers. For example, New York and London bank holidays.

You may add new centers at any time. Your contract gives you a guaranteed cost and is designed to make it very easy to do so.

We offer a vast number of format options. However, if you need a format that we do not offer, we can create it for you. Depending on the amount of work, there may be an additional charge.

Yes. You can switch between our standard formats at any time at no extra charge.

Yes. We guarantee that the formats will never, ever change (except at your request).

Yes. We provide unlimited, free informational support to all customers.

Yes. You can cancel for any reason, at any time, with five days’ notice.