Furthering its leadership in fixed income electronic trading, BondDesk Group announced the enhancement of its BondDesk Institutional (BDI) product.
Now 30,000 live and executable fixed income offerings are available to portfolio managers and traders at banks, private trust companies and investment management firms through the BondDesk platform. Current BDI clients include SEI, Chittenden Bank, Christiana Bank and hundreds of others.
The BDI platform offers access to one of the largest odd lot fixed income liquidity pools with over 100 broker dealers contributing their municipals, corporates, agencies, treasuries and CD inventory. Portfolio managers and traders can now participate in a competitive multi-dealer environment with visible depth of market, helping them meet best execution responsibilities.
"The BondDesk Institutional platform is extremely user friendly," said Pete Bednarek, portfolio manager at SEI. "When we conducted odd-lot trades before implementing BondDesk, it was a manual process involving calls to the dealer. Now, we access muni inventory and trade on-line very quickly, which has allowed us to double our daily odd-lot trades. The ability to organize and select inventory, as well as confirm trades with BondDesk, lets us trade in confidence, especially during peak periods, such as client portfolio rebalancing."
"BondDesk is my favorite trading platform as it makes investing in bonds just as easy as investing in cash," said Lyn White, an investment officer at Delaware-based Christiana Bank and Trust. "It eliminates manual steps making selecting and trading bonds simpler and faster. Another big advantage is the ability to trade odd lots easily. We get real-time information - yields, maturity, call features, CUSIP number - on one screen allowing us to make the best investment decisions quickly. With other electronic trading platforms, we have to go to several screens to retrieve the same information," she added.
Peter Harker, Managing Director of BondDesk Group said, "We are delighted to bring these enhancements to BDI and offer the best fixed income execution and liquidity to the odd lot institutional market. Portfolio managers and traders need to trade in the quickest and most efficient manner in a variety of asset classes without hopping from terminal to terminal. BDI answers that need."