Bondscape Celebrates Its Tenth Anniversary

In 2000, Barclays Capital and Winterflood Securities identified a growing trend for retail clients to invest in the fixed income market. Recognising that traditionally this had been a complicated process for private client brokers, they sought to provide a solution and so Bondscape.net was born. HSBC subsequently joined as a further price provider, additionally strengthening the platform.

With the growth of SIPPs and ISAs, the retail appetite for fixed income instruments has grown substantially with many more clients wanting access to the bond markets in smaller sizes in order to make decisions on their self-administered portfolios.

Bondscape.net has evolved alongside this increasing demand, creating a free, robust, transparent platform still firmly focused on the retail investor. The platform routes, on average, over 94,000 trades per year, valued at over £1.5bn.

Bondscape.net is at the forefront of providing key information on new retail bond issues and was pleased to be able to offer primary and secondary trading to retail brokers when Lloyds TSB recently launched a retail targeted bond.

Matt Rickard, Head of Dealing at stockbroker Hargreaves Lansdown commented " Bondscape.net has been an essential tool for us, playing an integral part in our ability to offer our clients a broad, comprehensive service in fixed income products."

Mark Glowrey, editor of www.fixedincomeinvestor.co.uk, said " Bonds had long been the Cinderella asset class for private investors in the UK. This was, at least in part, due to the lack of visibility in the Sterling bond market. The development of the Bondscape.net platform has considerably improved this situation. The Bondscape.net partners provide a valuable service to UK investors and their brokers by creating and maintaining price transparency and small-sized execution capability across a wide range of sterling corporate bonds. "