EBS Treasury chosen to facilitate UK local authorities’ lending and borrowing

London – EBS BrokerTec, ICAP's market-leading electronic foreign exchange (FX) and fixed income business, announces today that EBS Treasury (previously MyTreasury), the liquidity management platform for the corporate treasury community, has been selected by the UK Municipal Bonds Agency (MBA) to offer electronic inter-authority lending and borrowing in the UK.

The platform will support direct borrowing and lending of cash between all UK local authorities by leveraging existing EBS Treasury functionality to provide an electronic, fully disclosed, direct trading solution. The inter-authority lending and borrowing market in the UK is estimated at $8.25bn but is currently executed bilaterally by telephone only.

Moving from the manual process currently employed onto the EBS Treasury platform will provide UK authorities with instant and seamless access to each other, and a secure and efficient environment in which to discover the full range of borrowing opportunities and execute the preferred arrangement. The service is expected to go live in the second quarter 2016.

At a second stage, UK local authorities will also be able to access other products through the EBS Treasury platform, including its comprehensive Money Market Fund (MMF), term deposit, certificate of deposit and commercial paper products – significantly increasing the variety of instruments available to them.

The initiative will also build on the unique position of the MBA to extend the platform’s services into different and innovative lending solutions.

Commenting on the service, Justin Meadows, CEO of EBS Treasury said: “EBS Treasury delivers a secure, electronic solution for clients managing their treasury solutions. We’re looking forward to working on expanding this service to work with UK local authorities in order to provide them with a more comprehensive and efficient way to access funding.”

Aidan Brady, CEO, MBA said: “To date, UK local authorities have relied on manual processes for borrowing and lending cash between them. While this has worked for a long time, the move to an electronic solution will improve access to capital and have a meaningful impact on the efficiency of the process for their treasury teams. We are impressed with EBS Treasury’s technology and expertise and look forward to offering its systems to all our members soon.”