MarketAxess has announced the launch of a “Trading for Trees” incentive program.
The fixed income electronic trading platform has also rolled out new capabilities designed to streamline clients’ trading and sustainable investing in green bonds. The green bond initiatives follow a 108% year-over-year increase in global green bond trading on MarketAxess to over $19 billion in 2019. TRACE-reported trade volume in bonds financing environmentally friendly activities rose to over $57 billion in 2019, up from nearly $30 billion in 2018.
MarketAxess is partnering with the charitable organization One Tree Planted on its trading incentive program. Through the “Trading for Trees” program, 5 trees will be planted for every $1 million of green bond trading volume executed on the MarketAxess platform. Under the program, institutional investor and dealer clients will get credit for planting trees in the Amazon, Australia and other critical regions while fulfilling their ESG investment strategies. Based on global historical trading activity, MarketAxess expects the Trading for Trees program to plant over 100,000 trees in 2020. The program launched on January 1, 2020.
MarketAxess has also designed new Green Bond-related trading functionality:
- Flags to easily identify green bonds, issuers and dealers
- Watchlist functionality for a snapshot of green bond market activity
- Enriched “Like Bonds” tool to identify green bonds with similar characteristics as non-green bonds
- Enhanced Smart Dealer Select functionality to identify dealers that are providing liquidity in green bonds