Standard & Poor’s Fixed Income Risk Management Services (FIRMS), an analytics and research unit separate from S&P’s ratings business, announced a strategic alliance last week with the consumer credit agency Experian that the companies say will improve transparency in the securitized loan market.

The New York-based S&P and Experian, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, will collaborate on integrating Experian’s credit data and analytics with FIRMS securitized loan data and models, with a particular focus on the individual loans that are packaged in mortgage-backed securities (MBS).

The alliance will provide investors worldwide with more detailed information on the underlying loans in U.S. mortgage-backed securities.

In the first step of the partnership Experian Capital Markets will connect consumer credit information and attributes to S&P’s US RMBS Edition loan level data feed product.

“Securitized loan investors need to be able to drill down to the foundation of each individual loan in their portfolios to gain a truly comprehensive picture of their risk exposures,” said David Goldstein, managing director, S&P FIRMS. “Through our partnership with Experian, we will be able to provide investors with an amazing level of granularity on the fundamental risks in each loan and the ability to benchmark their portfolios against this data.”

According to Ethan Klemperer, SVP and general manager of Experian Capital Markets, the partnership will improve investor confidence and help restore liquidity to the secondary mortgage market.

“The goal of our collaboration is to provide investors with the transparency needed to value structured finance products and to make more informed buy and sell decisions,” Klemperer said.

The alliance with Experian is one of several steps S&P is taking to improve transparency on securitized mortgages. Last month, the company’s FIRMS division also announced a partnership with Veros Real Estate Solutions to provide property valuations on loans underlying residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS).