Markit — home, among other things, to the oft-covered ABX indices — said today that it has launched a performance monitoring platform for the U.S. ABS secondary market. Launched in response to market conditions, Markit said in a press statement that the new tool — called U.S. ABS Performance Data — is designed to bring greater transparency to the sub-prime mortgage market. The platform combines historical data at the bond, collateral pool and loan level to provide ABS market participants with a source of information for deal monitoring and securitization analysis. The company hopes to expand the platform to additional RMBS and ABS asset classes in the future. “Increasingly, ABS investors require a more timely and comprehensive understanding of the collateral underlying each ABS deal,” said Ben Logan, managing director of structured finance at Markit. “[Our] new product aims to bring much needed transparency to the U.S. ABS markets by providing clients with an up-to-date collateral monitoring tool alongside the other unique and valuable content we offer.â€? The tool will provide a range of information, including complete bond payment and collateral performance history, as well loan level statistics with data feed functionality.