Build America Mutual, a mutual insurer of United States municipal bonds, and Lumesis Inc., provider of regulatory compliance and data applications to the municipal market, announced an initiative to improve investors' access to municipal bond credit information.
The partners intend to make BAM's Obligor Disclosure Brief (ODB) credit summaries available to users of Lumesis' DIVER Advisor platform, the companies said. Investors, traders and other professionals use BAM's ODBs to review municipal credit quality; bond issuers, the public-sector entities that are BAM's members, would benefit from increased transparency, which can improve the liquidity of their insured and uninsured bonds, the companies said. BAM publishes an ODB for every issuer it insures and updates them annually; BAM has published more than 1,800 ODBs to date, the company said.
"BAM's ODBs are a clear complement to the information available on the DIVER Advisor platform. The annual ODB is another example of how we provide our users access to 'material information reasonably accessible' built into their workflow," said Gregg L. Bienstock, Esq., CEO and co-founder of Lumesis.
DIVER Advisor is intended to help the muni bond industry stay ahead of changing compliance obligations around the time of trade disclosure, suitability and for those institutions subject to Dodd Frank's standard of creditworthiness, Lumesis said. The integration will enable users to have one-click access to BAM's ODBs for all insured CUSIPs. DIVER Advisor users also will be able to forward the ODBs to their clients for review. DIVER Advisor also will flag uninsured CUSIPs that BAM has pre-approved for its secondary-market insurance program, the companies said. And, bonds insured by BAM in the secondary market can benefit from an improved credit rating and heightened market liquidity.
"Improving market transparency is at the core of BAM's mission to serve municipal bond issuers and investors and that means delivering useful credit information to the market when it's most valuable,” said Seán W. McCarthy, Build America Mutual CEO. “Our integration with DIVER Advisor does that, putting the information in the hands of a retail advisor at the moment they need it to help evaluate a bond purchase decision, or explain a credit to their client."
