Telekurs Financial has signed an agreement with Bondweb Malaysia, the country’s only current bond pricing agency, to integrate Bondweb’s fair value prices into Telekurs’ Valordata Feed (VDF) and Intraday Pricing Service (IPS).
Bondweb Malaysia has been offering fair values for approximately 2,000 fixed income bonds traded in ringgit since 2005.The deal with the Malaysian agency is part of Telekurs’ strategy to provide greater coverage of global fixed income markets. “Access to a transparent fair value pricing service is crucial to participants in the fixed income market on both the buy side and the sell side,” says Fritz Hediger, head of marketing at Telekurs Financial.
Telekurs’ Singapore subsidiary has been fostering its relationship with Bondweb for more than two years on various other matters, which, over time, led to a discussion of partnership, he explains. “It was clear to both parties from the start that such a mutually beneficial partnership would serve to reinforce the reputation of Bondweb and Telekurs Financial as reliable and premier providers. Telekurs Financial was keen to have Bondweb as a partner to cover the Malaysian market. Bondweb is the only company that is able to offer fair values to this extent of coverage,” Hediger says.
“This arrangement with Telekurs enhances the distribution network of Malaysian evaluated bond prices to a more global scale,” says Meor Amri Meor Ayob, chief operating officer at Bondweb Malaysia.Hediger adds: “First and foremost, our clients will profit from an enhanced data offering. Up until now, we covered 55,000 securities with our own fair value pricing service, in 11 different currencies (EUR, CHF, DKK, GBP, NOK, JPY, AUD, NZD, USD, CAD and ZAR). With Bondweb, we can now offer valuations for approximately 2,000 more instruments, denominated in Malaysian ringgit (MYR) as well. Bondweb’s unbiased pricing will undoubtedly serve the needs of the investor, fund managers, brokers and analysts better. This is particularly valuable for our clients who are based or are active in the Asian markets.”
He reckons that as Bondweb is the first entity to be accorded the status of bond pricing agency in Malaysia and it works closely with the Malaysian Securities Commission, it is a “reliable” company. “Its role as an agency aims to fulfil the objectives of building a more liquid domestic bond market. This is not only important for their clients, but also for our clients to know. Furthermore, their instrument classification and selection is very similar to our way of working. Therefore, it complements our own offering very well.”
The integration process was not an arduous one, adds Tanner: “We did not face undue challenges, nor were we expecting any with the integration of prices into VDF and IPS. In fact, the implementation was completed expediently in a few short weeks.” He believes this is due to Telekurs Financial’s “flexible data model”, which he claims has made the seamless integration possible.
The new offering is likely to have an impact on those that have not previously been active in the Malaysian market, says Hediger. “The new offering is interesting for all clients and potential clients that are active in the Asian, especially in the Malaysian market. For those clients who do not invest in these markets, this new addition may well increase their interest in these markets. Other than that, I do not think that there will be a special domestic impact – except, maybe, that more companies will dare to trade Malaysian bonds, because they now have reliable valuations available to them,” he concludes.
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