According the bank, InGen allows investors to search through private placements from almost 200 issuers and make decisions based on criteria such as yield, term, sector and structure, among others factors.
“Securities in private placement format are issued in many different shapes and sizes,” said Friedrich Luithlen, head of debt capital markets at DZ Bank in a statement. “The large number of possible combinations often makes it difficult for investors to make the right choice.”
The platform works by giving institutional investors the option of filtering private placements to match their preferences. InGen then supplies what it thinks best matches the investors’ criteria, and lists them based on potential returns in real time.
Developing the pricing engine took DZ Bank’s Innovation Lab two years.
Trades cannot be completed on the platform, and still require investors to call the MTN desk to finish the deal.
While MTN dealers were happy to see another platform take on Origin, they are still waiting for a system that can close deal electronically.
“There’s nothing wrong with electronic platforms consolidating information, but the important part is the ability to close a transaction and we still aren’t close to being able to do that on these platforms,” said a MTN banker. “What would be good is to have something like the electronic bookbuilding systems employed on some public market trades.”
