The FINANCIAL — Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (NYSE:ICE), a leading operator of global exchanges and clearing houses and provider of mortgage technology, data and listings services, today announced that four new market makers have joined the ICE ETF Hub pilot program. In addition, several enhancements have been made to the platform.
ICE ETF Hub launched the pilot program to allow issuers, market makers and authorized participants to experience, first-hand, the custom basket negotiation technology in a production environment. The new firms joining the program include Brownstone Investment Group LLC, Flow Traders, Sumridge and Wolverine. They join existing market makers, including Jane Street, Old Mission and CTC, among others. Additional firms are expected to join the platform in the coming months.
“The addition of these firms demonstrates the ETF industry’s desire for, and commitment to, increased efficiencies within the ETF primary market, which ultimately enables issuers to offer more innovation to the investment community,” said Peter Borstelmann, President of ICE Bonds and Head of ICE ETF Hub.
ICE ETF Hub also recently launched new functionality giving more control and flexibility to market participants. The enhancements include the ability to pre-screen baskets against lists and indices, as well as ‘Countering’ functionality, giving participants more flexibility in negotiating custom baskets. In addition, ICE ETF Hub recently completed its connection to ICE FI Select, allowing traders to source bonds in the secondary cash market via ICE Bonds’ liquidity pools, and launched the ICE Chatfunctionality to support the custom basket workflow.
ICE ETF Hub’s custom basket negotiation technology allows primary market participants to negotiate and assemble custom basket proposals in an automated environment. This important improvement helps fixed income participants transition away from the cumbersome manual and bespoke processes in use today, to a standardized and automated environment.
ICE ETF Hub is an industry-wide, open architecture, technology solution, offering a more standardized and simplified process for the creation and redemption of ETF shares. ICE ETF Hub currently supports both US-listed domestic equity and fixed income ETFs.
