Ipreo, a provider of market intelligence and productivity solutions to financial services and corporate professionals, has implemented Investor Access, which allows investors to electronically submit orders directly to the sell-side syndicate banks on fixed-income new issues.
A five-year GBP-denominated covered bond transaction was executed for a Commonwealth Bank of Australia deal last Thursday, which marks the first time both sell-side and buy-side participants have conducted the deal process electronically – including order entry and allocation – on a live primary issue.
An industry-led initiative, Investor Access allows the investors to be alerted to new-issue announcements, receive structured information on deal terms and conditions, submit and manage orders, and receive electronic notification of allocation and pricing details, along with other deal-related information such as the prospectus and final terms.
Thursday's Commonwealth Bank of Australia deal represents the culmination of a two-year development process that began with sell-side sponsorship of the idea to improve efficiency in the primary issue process. The initiative evolved to include a robust investor community and succeeded through the collaboration of all participants to make that idea a reality.
Investor Access is now available to all banks in the EMEA region and work is already well underway to launch Investor Access in Asia, where Ipreo is working with banks and a number of buy-side firms in the region to prepare for go-live in 2017.
"This is a very important milestone in the market evolution towards greater efficiency and reduced risk in the deal and order communications process," says Bill Sherman (pictured), executive vice president, global markets group at Ipreo. "The solution has immediate tangible benefits to the investors, syndicate banks, and issuers. We're delighted to have been able to facilitate this process and help make these improvements possible."
Thursday's Commonwealth Bank of Australia deal was led by CBA, HSBC and Nomura.
"The use of Investor Access on this initial deal was an exciting step forward in improving how business is done in the primary markets, and we are very pleased to have been part of it," says Chris Jones, managing director, debt syndicate, London at HSBC.
The Investor Access initiative is the result of collaboration between a core group of 11 sponsoring banks and an active community of over 100 buy-side participants. The original sponsoring group includes BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole CIB, Commerzbank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, ING, MUFG, NatWest Markets, Santander, Societe Generale, and UBS.
