Innovation in the Swiss capital market: Loanboox also digitises bonds
After successfully establishing itself as the leading platform in the area of community financing, Loanboox is now also digitising the Swiss bond market. With this, the company, which won the Swiss Fintech Award 2018, now also serves the strong need of issuers and investors for simple, transparent, secure and low-cost issuance and investment on the capital market.
In future, Swiss cities, cantons, large companies and banks will be able to issue bonds as self-issues via the independent money and capital market platform Loanboox. What was previously mostly done via issuing houses in a non-transparent, costly and time-consuming process is now possible with just a few clicks via Loanboox.
In this way, we connect the issuer and the investor directly with each other. The intermediary becomes superfluous.
Customer need implemented
Loanboox has been on the market in Switzerland for 21 months, and in Germany for a few months. Loanboox already has 800 borrowers and 300 capital providers. “As a result, we are in constant contact with many smart and innovative minds at major borrowers such as cities, cantons and companies. In the discussions, the question kept coming up whether Loanboox could not also offer an efficient solution for issuing bonds,” says Stefan Mühlemann, founder & CEO of Loanboox.
Until now, a major bank has usually taken over the bookbuilding for issuers. “This is done offline and with a lot of telephone, email and even letter contact. The issuer neither knows the investors nor has transparency about the various offers in the bookbuilding,” reports Stefan Feller, Director Capital Markets at Loanboox, from his own experience as former Head Financing at Axpo Group. “In today’s interest rate and investment situation, institutional investors and banks are also looking for cheap and efficient ways to place their money on the capital market,” Feller continues.
Dynamic bookbuilding ensures transparency
Loanboox fully meets the requirements of both issuers and investors with the digital bond. Thanks to the innovative and dynamic live bookbuilding, high transparency is guaranteed on the platform. The individual process steps, deadlines and fees are comprehensible and known to both parties in advance. Settlement is then carried out via a paying agent of a Swiss bank, including generation and booking of the book-entry securities at SIX SIS. In cooperation with a law firm experienced in the capital markets as listing agent, the bonds are listed on SIX.
Roll-out throughout Switzerland in late summer
Our primary target group is established debtors on the capital market, such as cities, cantons, but also large companies with a high credit rating.
On the investor side, Loanboox is aimed, as before, at insurance companies, pension funds, asset managers but also banks. The first issues in Switzerland will be possible via Loanboox in late summer. “The beta version is up and running. The customer feedback is very positive. Now we are fine-tuning it and preparing for the go-live. The next few weeks will be intense,” says Mühlemann.
Here you can find a the pressrelease as PDF “Innovation am Schweizer Kapitalmarkt: Loanboox digitalisiert auch Anleihen”.
