The source code is copyright of ISDA and available under an Open Source license.

As the CDS market evolves to trade single name contracts with a fixed coupon and upfront payment, it is critical for CDS investors to match the upfront payment amounts and to be able to translate upfront quotations to spread quotations and vice versa in a standardized manner.

One of the primary goals in making the code available is to enhance transparency and to optimize use of standard technology for CDS pricing. Implementing the ISDA CDS Standard Model and using the agreed standard input parameters will allow CDS market participants to tie out calculations and thus improve consistency and reduce operational differences downstream.

Markit, in its role as administrator for this open source project, provides support for the maintenance of the code and moderates the forum on this open source website. In addition, Markit develops and maintains the documentation provided with the code and will provide support to future ISDA working groups around the open source code.

The ISDA Credit Steering Committee recommends the use of the ISDA CDS model for all fee calculations starting on Monday, June 1, 2009.  The recommendation covers single-name corporate (bond and loan) and sovereign CDS for all regions and currencies and CDS index swaps including but not limited to Markit CDX and iTraxx and MCDX for all regions and currencies.  The specification of the ISDA model for fee calculations is available at http://www.cdsmodel.com/.  The intent of this recommendation is to complete the transition to the ISDA CDS model begun with the earlier recommendation for CDX contracts. Implementations such as the Markit Converter and Bloomberg's CDSW will by default use the ISDA CDS model and related standard settings starting on June 1.

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