Turning to Clearwater for a Full Life Cycle CP Issuance Solution

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Clearwater Analytics created a CP trade system built to one corporate’s specifications that other issuers can now use.

Finance leaders at a mega-cap tech company that is extremely active in the commercial paper (CP) market decided a few years ago to upgrade their system used to manage the end-to-end workflow and process of selling short-term debt through a Wall Street dealer network. They searched for solutions but concluded that no off-the-shelf tools could adequately handle the full life cycle of CP issuance planning, real-time execution monitoring, settlement and reporting.

So in 2023 they turned to a vendor that the treasury team knew well, a company trusted by this corporate and many other NeuGroup members that rely on its investment accounting and reporting platform: Clearwater Analytics.

The new CP tool ultimately built by Clearwater and launched last year—which other corporates can now use—is part of the solution provider’s strategy to expand the value its technology offers clients into new areas. It’s doing that through both acquisitions and innovation. And this month, the company changed its corporate name to CWAN.

“We realized this was an opportunity to leverage our core strengths in data connectivity and complex financial workflows,” said Souvik Das, CTO at CWAN. “The collaboration showed us how our platform capabilities could extend into capital markets execution in ways that could benefit other corporates facing similar challenges.”

CWAN’s edge. Why the tech company chose CWAN is straightforward. “Clearwater was the obvious vendor to work with given their deep experience with counterparties, data feeds and developing custom reporting solutions,” said a senior portfolio manager (PM) in the corporate’s investing group, which has responsibility for CP issuance. “They know how to handle things.”

The head of the corporate’s investing group put it this way: “This is a trusted partner that wants to build their product suite. They have a group of people that understand CP issuance as well as the investment side of CP. And they’ve worked with us on other reporting and system issues. So it just made a lot of sense.”

The corporate didn’t, however, assume CWAN would sign on. “We were surprised in terms of their willingness,” the PM said. “We were upfront in saying, ‘We think that there’s probably a limited market for this product because other corporate issuers might not want to necessarily manage CP the way that we do. But this is what we’re looking for.’”

What followed, he said, was a year or so of conversations with CWAN and a relatively fast three-to-five months of development by the vendor to deliver an initial, viable product.

The cloud and other corporates. For a decade before turning to CWAN, the CP issuer had been using proprietary database software to manage a program with an average of $200 million maturing daily and issuances that can be significantly higher when cash needs arise.

One problem: “It wasn’t on a system foundation that we were comfortable with for the long term,” the PM said. “We wanted a flexible platform capable of desired enhancements gained from experience as an issuer, while also upgrading our system architecture from a database on a local server to a cloud-based hosted solution.”

CWAN’s SaaS-based platform solved that issue. Collaborating with CWAN also allowed the corporate to tie its CP issuance tech wagon to a vendor serving many clients that is likely to continue to invest in the solution. “The downside of developing these tools internally is that you have to keep investing in them because there are new enhancement needs that come along,” the PM said. “We wanted to have this as a tool that was more broadly accepted to ensure continued investment in the platform and ideally faster implementation.”

“The tool is not just for us,” he added. “It’s for other folks that have gone through the same struggles that we have in terms of how inefficient this process is, how ripe for automation. Having other folks use it and it becoming a business—the product will get even better and help the market.”

The tool explained. The solution CWAN developed for the corporate brings together in one place the many dates, dollar amounts, interest rates and names of financial institutions (both dealers and paying agents) involved in a CP issuance, starting with the initiation of the trade all the way through tracking that every trade is settled successfully.

An “issuance manager tool” lets the user select the CP issuance date, specify maturity ranges and issuing rates, select dealers, and calculate the total net issuance before saving the planned issuance. The tool then generates and sends emails to the dealers. For this functionality, CWAN largely replicated what the corporate’s previous system did, the PM said.

But unlike it, the solution now allows the issuer to adapt to unanticipated, intraday changes by going back in the tool and revising the allocations. This helps if, say, one dealer cannot place all of its allocation but finds an investor that wants a different maturity and rate. If the corporate agrees, “we can add that date range at that rate, then that will show it will be in compliance with all the instructions,” the PM explained.

Where the magic lives. An “issuance tracker tool” provides what the PM described as the “magic” of the solution. It allows users, according to CWAN, to conduct real-time monitoring of the intraday issuance process, including “a meticulous comparison of instructions, settlements, and pending vs. settled transactions.”

The PM prizes the tool’s ability to show in real time the progress CP dealers are making with allocations, with trades going from unexecuted to pending to made. It displays the total amount executed, with figures that exceed the allocation plan appearing in red.

“What’s really helpful,” the PM said, “is when we’re doing large issuances and we’re seeing these trades early, where all the dealers are placing paper. We can help out dealers that still have paper out there to say, ‘there’s demand in these maturities, this is what we’re seeing.’ That’s useful color for their trading team. And under the old structure, we didn’t have this centralized, real-time insight.”

Tracking progress also allows the issuer to deal with problems before a trade fails. “You want to have eyeballs on it in a way that you can see things early. How we did that with Clearwater was they linked directly into our paying agent to enable us to see everything on one system rather than looking at multiple systems.”

Saving time and money. The PM says the tool’s ability to head off problems saves time for numerous people, including treasury operations team members who normally would have to devote significant time when issues arise to “make sure the program doesn’t fail and is sufficiently funded.”

Cody Lott, Senior Director of Corporate and REIT Solutions at CWAN, said the workflow component of the tool also provides issuers an edge in setting rates for their CP. “Those that have adopted the tool have actually saved significant money, as you might imagine, shopping for additional rates, doing direct comparisons,” he said.

“In addition, we have caught errors on the back end that they wouldn’t have necessarily caught before, which saved time and money.”

The head of the investing team said the tool’s impact is far-reaching. “This system helps us in the front office, from communication on trading, mid-office for compliance and seeing how our trading is going, to back office and settlement, as well as our analytics and our reporting.”

Building blocks. CWAN’s goal is to use its successful collaboration developing the CP issuance tool to this client’s specifications as a model for co-creating other capital markets solutions that leverage its expertise at managing complex data, connectivity and reporting challenges faced by corporates.

During a recent NeuGroup Peer Research focus group session sponsored by CWAN, Mr. Lott sought feedback from NeuGroup members on the ambitious and perhaps overly optimistic goal of treasury teams moving to a single interface that could handle real-time cash views, initiate investments in money market funds and time deposits, and connect with banks.

“If you take the foundation of the building blocks that have been built for the CP issuance tool, I think there’s a similar workflow that could be put in place for communication with banking institutions as well,” he said. “Meaning you could go in, shop rates, do a peer comparison. It’s something that we’re aiming to build with you and your peers to further enrich the value of what CWAN can potentially offer,” he told members.

A happy customer that wants more. CWAN’s performance in developing the product drew praise from the corporate. “They were very industrious,” the PM said. “They got on the phone with the dealers to see what direct data options there were; they were on with the paying agent; they’re dealing with DTC on trade information. So we’re leveraging that expertise and in terms of development speed, it was very quick. We’re very impressed with the final product.”

The corporate now is looking ahead to enhancements for the tool. “Our view is that it’s by no means complete. So we’re looking to continue to enhance it and make incremental improvements.”

One goal is to have a more robust pricing model for the corporate’s CP curve and the ability to “evaluate yourself as a program in your execution over a longer period of time,” he said. “We’re trying to tease that out to then figure out when we can build some historical analysis on where we’re issuing versus peers or different benchmarks.”

Other beneficiaries and the big picture. Any enhancements, of course, will benefit other corporates using the CP tool. In late July, CWAN announced that McCormick & Co.—the flavor and spice company—has adopted the solution to streamline short-term capital raising and improve oversight of its program, according to a press release that quotes Tony Masteran, senior treasury manager at McCormick.

“Clearwater enables us to make better pricing decisions, track dealer performance and reduce internal complexity,” he said. “Gaining a clear, real-time view of our commercial paper program is essential to managing costs and executing quickly.”

Data suggest that the market for CP tools may be deeper than some observers might guess: 62% of respondents to a recent NeuGroup Research capital markets survey said they issue CP. And total CP outstanding has risen about 29% in 2025 to $1.4 trillion, according to Federal Reserve data. Fed rate cuts this year could drive more issuance of short-term debt.

CWAN Chief Revenue Officer Scott Erickson sees adoption of the CP tool by more companies as part of a broader trend. “McCormick’s implementation represents a strategic shift we’re seeing across corporate treasury—the movement from fragmented, transaction-based approaches to integrated, technology-enabled capital optimization,” he said.

Turning to Clearwater for a Full Life Cycle CP Issuance Solution

Clearwater Analytics created a CP trade system built to one corporate’s specifications that other issuers can now use.

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