Through Bloomberg’s Electronic Trading (ET) offering, investors can now stage, monitor, trade, process and allocate Korea Treasury Bond trades in a fully electronic workflow. The workflow allows for Korea’s Investor Registration Certificates (IRCs) to be captured and conveyed at each stage of the trade life cycle.

To mark this launch, the first fully electronic trade was successfully performed on Bloomberg between two major international participants in Korea Treasury Bonds - Standard Chartered and a global buy-side investor.

Tony Hall, Global Head of Macro Trading, Financial Markets, at Standard Chartered said: “Standard Chartered is one of the largest primary dealers in Korea Treasury Bonds and this enhancement by Bloomberg has brought about meaningful optimisation to our trading workflow. The growing adoption of electronic bond trading is an exciting step forward for the market. Initiatives like this greatly improve trading efficiency by automating manual processes and improving the flow of data.”

Sharad Desai, Global Head of Sales and Structuring, Financial Markets, at Standard Chartered said: “We are excited to be the first dealer to launch a fully electronic offering in Korea Treasury Bonds. We see a transformation in Asia’s fixed income markets as the pandemic accelerates the pace of digitisation. Korea Treasury Bonds are actively traded by foreign investors, and we see growing demand from institutional investors around the world due to the country’s healthy economic growth.”

The electronic trading of Korea Treasury Bonds on Bloomberg is now simpler and faster for foreign investors to access the local market. They undertake a one-time setup of IRC, which was previously sent manually on each trade request. Subsequently, clients can request quotes and communicate IRCs to multiple dealers on an integrated workflow, then seamlessly allocate the trade in a single submission.

William Oberuch, Global Head of Emerging Market Trading at Bloomberg said: “The benefits of adopting a fully electronic trading workflow are well understood by dealers in the Asia-Pacific region. As global markets become increasingly connected, it is even more important that market participants find seamless ways of accessing liquidity and sourcing market interest. Fully electronic trading platforms bring greater trading efficiency, more seamless workflows and lower transaction costs.”