Bloomberg Expands List Trading RFQ Platform

Earlier this year, Bloomberg’s list trading RFQ platform, called BOLT, expanded to support electronic trading of repos, with some of the highlights being the ability to manage haircuts and rates across traders and sales interactions, prevent disintermediation, put in targets to be displayed to dealers so they can provide pricing, and the use of integrated IB for negotiation. The global platform has been rolled out to over 40 dealers and clients, with Europe taking the lead on the back of SFTR (Securities Financing Transactions Regulation) because of the significant reporting processes involved. Supported financial instruments include: high grade, high yield, emerging markets (EM), credit default swaps (CDS), interest rate swaps (IRS) and municipal bonds. The extent to which the pandemic has affected the offering’s launch and uptake isn’t so clear: however, one consequence has been that participants are more urgently looking for the efficiency and error reduction that comes with electronification. Either way, BOLT is now in its sixth month of record volumes with a month-over-month increase of 57% from October to November.