IHS Markit (NYSE: INFO), a world leader in critical information, analytics and solutions, today announced the launch of Ipreo Muni for institutional investors, the first electronic platform to directly connect asset managers to live primary market information published by municipal bond dealers. The platform provides a centralized hub of real-time pricing, analytics and issue-specific updates for all municipal new issuance.
In the primary market for municipal bonds, institutional investors have traditionally relied upon deal wires and email to receive transaction-related updates from dealers. This can result in thousands of manual updates being exchanged each week, creating an inefficient structure for managing transactions. Ipreo Muni modernizes that process with an electronic framework that optimizes the information exchange by streaming up-to-the-minute insight from dealers to the buyside. It also features the official municipal new issue calendar with dozens of search parameters and enhanced functionality for summary statistics and supply distribution.
“Across the financial services industry, technology has delivered greater efficiency and faster access to market data, but for the municipal buyside community, these benefits have not been fully realized,” said Will MacPherson, managing director at IHS Markit. “Our new platform introduces a proven electronic framework for the information ecosystem in primary markets and is a continuation of our strategy to make primary markets more efficient by enhancing the connectivity between participants.”
For each new issue, users can view dealer-driven live pricing along with historical analytics, pre-marketing data, preliminary pricing, repricing, spreads to benchmarks, CUSIPs, key dates and more. In addition, internal collaboration, current and historical deal wires, Preliminary Official Statement (POS) links and other deal documents are archived in the platform.
The new platform is an extension of the industry-leading bookbuilding and syndication management services from Ipreo, which was acquired by IHS Markit in 2018. Muni market solutions include deal execution, electronic bid calculation and order entry, deal tracking, retail bookbuilding services and historical data offerings.
In other fixed income markets, such as corporate bonds, IHS Markit offers similar technology and services, including the IssueBook, IssueNet and Investor Access platforms.
