GLOBAL - Credit Suisse's transition management group has launched a trade-crossing service for pension fund sponsors in the US.

The idea is to lower costs for pension clients, the bank said. Crossing is a way for institutional investors to trade with little market impact.

Credit Suisse said SponsorCross is a “trading crossing capability designed for plan sponsor clients who are in the process of implementing a transition, a corporate buyback, raising cash for distribution to pension fund participants or reallocation of assets and funding new managers with cash”.

Hari Achuthan, a director in the Swiss bank’s pension strategies and transition management group, said the system was “the latest in a suite of cutting-edge products that enable us to provide our plan sponsor clients a best-in-class platform for transition implementation".

"The role of SponsorCross is to provide equal opportunities between plan sponsors to potentially reduce risk and associated implementation costs (implementation shortfall) of a transition," he said in a release.

The product identifies crosses between plan sponsors only “while optimizing and maximizing crossing opportunities”.

All such transactions are priced using the closing prices of the benchmark date and printed on the respective exchanges.

Once the first step of crossing between plan sponsors is complete, the second step is to cross the order with other Credit Suisse client flow to potentially reduce implementation costs for plan sponsors.

This process is managed by CrossFinder, Credit Suisse’s proprietary crossing system which is also an Alternative Trading System.