“The Sweeps protocol continues to be an important tool for dealers for additional liquidity and risk management.”
Intercontinental Exchange has relaunched ICE Risk Matching Auction (RMA), an enhanced sweeps session-based protocol for dealer-to-dealer fixed-income trading, the company announced.
ICE RMA, part of the ICE Bonds’ suite of trading protocols, was initially launched in 2015 and now conducts multiple auctions each week, with 50 registered firms and over 400 users with access to the protocol.
ICE proprietary algorithm matches buyers and sellers of the same bond
With ICE RMA, after traders upload their inventory of bonds, an ICE proprietary algorithm matches buyers and sellers of the same bond or list of bonds.
The enhanced sweeps session-based protocol leverages ICE’s Continuous Evaluated Pricing to propose a pricing level for the bonds, which traders can either affirm or reject on a line-item basis or in bulk.
This process gives customers an efficient way to reduce risk exposure as they access a broadening pool of fixed income liquidity.
ICE Bonds offers growing pools of liquidity and multiple trading protocols including click-to-trade, request-for-quote, sweeps and portfolio auctions for U.S. Municipal, Corporate, Treasury, Agency, MBS Pass-throughs, emerging market and sovereign bonds and certificates of deposit.
The company’s CEP provides front-, middle- and back-office professionals with streaming intraday fixed income evaluations and offers greater pre-trade transparency for price discovery and idea generation.
“Important tool for dealers for additional liquidity and risk management”
Peter Borstelmann, President of ICE Bonds, said: “The Sweeps protocol continues to be an important tool for dealers for additional liquidity and risk management. It was clear there was demand for improvement in this space – room to deliver an even better product than what existed in the market today. With our relaunch, we’ve delivered a highly intuitive and easy to use platform that incorporates direct user feedback. The initial adoption and activity validates this belief and we are excited about the potential as we continue to develop innovative solutions for the market.”
Amanda Hindlian, President of Fixed Income and Data Services at ICE, commented: “Our broad offering across fixed income provides a range of services that our customers can use to gain more transparency into volatile markets. The RMA relaunch builds on our strengths in both execution and data to deliver a robust sweeps solution that helps manage risk exposure across fixed income portfolios.”
