US investment banking rivals Citi and Bank of America have joined forces to develop and build a new data and trading platform for fixed income markets.
Both banks have confirmed plans to develop a next generation multi-dealer trading and data and analytics platform for structured credit and underlying collateral markets. It is currently in the testing phase and is expected to launch later this year.
The platform will initially support collateral loan obligations (CLOs) and syndicated loans as both institutions hope to address challenges in both markets for broker-dealers and buy-side clients around liquidity and trading costs.
With a focus on modern technology development and speeding up time to market for new products, Citi and Bank of America said they have deployed a low code methodology to build the first protocols for CLO BWICS (bid wanted in competition) and loan matching.
“Not only will the platform help to increase operational efficiencies and transparency, we believe this is going to change how the industry currently trades in these markets and eventually lead to greater liquidity and market participation,” said David Trepanier, head of structured products for global credit at Bank of America.
Citi is backing the project through its Spread Product Investment Technologies (SPRINT) group as part of the bank’s FinTech investments initiative.
Brian Bejile, head of loan portfolio trading and e-trading for loans and CLOs at Citi, commented that with the acceleration of fixed income markets, the collaboration with Bank of America will help lead the change.
“[The platform] will build out a more accessible, user-friendly marketplace for third party data and analytics and will combine the trading and data consumption in these markets onto a single platform with seamless user experience,” he added.