DPC DATA MuniGUARD Surveillance Services Provides Increased Market Transparency for...

DPC DATA MuniGUARD Surveillance Services Provides Increased Market
Transparency for Municipal Bond Investors

FORT LEE, N.J., June 10 /PRNewswire/ -- DPC DATA, a leading provider of
municipal bond disclosure data, today introduced MuniGUARD(TM), a new suite of
surveillance services for investors, advisors and brokers concerned about
significant increases in the credit risk of their municipal bond holdings.
MuniGUARD tracks and provides automated notification about various events that
impact credit quality. Several levels of the service are available to address
subscribers' specific needs for custom filtering, timeliness and descriptive
data.

This new DPC DATA information service answers the market demand for timely
credit information, particularly default risk. The most recent DPC DATA
research report on municipal disclosures* found that distress-related material
event notices jumped from 187 in 2007 to 348 in 2008. More ominously, the
number of troubled municipal credits is accelerating, with official distress
notices multiplying in 2009 at more than four times the rate for the
corresponding period in 2008. Monetary default notices for the month of April
2009 alone numbered more than 120.

"With the downgrading of municipal credit ratings confirming our findings, we
believe that the investing community and their service providers have good
reason to seek timely information about credit-related filings in the
municipal bond market," said Peter J. Schmitt, CEO of DPC DATA. "MuniGUARD is
designed to answer those concerns, alerting subscribers to distress filings by
issuers or obligors, so that the investing community can adjust their credit
risk perspective on these offerings."

The core MuniGUARD service offers market-wide tracking of any distress-related
material event notice that is officially filed. These notice types include the
following:

-- Payment delinquencies
-- Non-payment, or 'technical', defaults
-- Unscheduled draws on debt service reserves
-- Unscheduled draws on credit enhancements

When these notices are filed, subscribers receive instant notifications which
will identify the bond offering by issuer name, dated date, issue description,
coupon, maturity, and CUSIP (for subscribers with a CUSIP license). The
service can also include hyperlinks to the definitive material event notices
in the DPC DATA online document repository at www.MuniFILINGS.com. Depending
on their needs, subscribers may choose from various delivery options of
format, channel or supported trading platforms.

"MuniGUARD provides a first line of defense against the increasing uncertainty
in today's municipal marketplace," notes Michael Ruvo, president of DPC DATA.
"For investors, it reduces the risk of being caught unawares when municipal
credits grow shaky. For their advisors and brokers, MuniGUARD is a simple and
economical means to stay informed and protect their clients from the riskiest
elements in the market."

The next tier of service is MuniGUARD Portfolio, designed to surveille a
specific list of holdings or issues of interest. As with the core MuniGUARD
service, subscribers will receive instantaneous notification whenever a new
distress filing is made that relates to any of their listed issues and can
choose the optimum delivery mechanism for their purposes.

Being launched in the third quarter is the third-tier service, MuniGUARD News,
a weekly online newsletter listing the new filings of distress-related
material events. MuniGUARD News is designed for investors and other market
participants who do not require immediate notification, but who want to track
municipal securities distress notice trends and conveniently access the
definitive notices. MuniGUARD news will be priced at $59 per year.

For more information on MuniGUARD, MuniGUARD Portfolio and MuniGUARD News,
please contact DPC DATA at Sales@DPCDATA.com.

About DPC DATA
DPC DATA Inc., founded in 1992, provides securities-related data products and
services to more than 600 financial institutions and information
intermediaries. DPC DATA is a strategic partner of Standard & Poor's. In
addition to marketing its own portfolio of data products supporting securities
market transparency, DPC DATA offers outsourced and offshore services in
custom data management and software development. DPC DATA is a privately held
firm, headquartered in Fort Lee, NJ. For more information please visit
www.DPCDATA.com.

*"The Consequences of Poor Disclosure Enforcement: A Study of Questionable
Trading Practices Based on Publicly Available Information Held by the NRMSIRs
and the MSRB," DPC DATA, 2009, available at www.DPCDATA.com.

MuniGUARD(TM) is a trademark of DPC DATA Inc.

SOURCE DPC DATA

Kathleen Hawk, for DPC DATA, +1-845-687-2222, kathleen@clearviewpr.com