TheMuniCenter is an established electronic marketplace created for the purpose of facilitating live fixed income trading across multiple asset classes. TheMuniCenter's objective is to provide qualified market participants with equal access to aggregated content, liquidity, and distribution on a single easy to use site. Broker-dealers, institutions, money managers, and financial advisers are just a few examples of the types of users accessing both the TheMuniCenter’s open web-based platform and proprietary applications programming interface (API). Providing the market with a single venue for live anonymous trading, TheMuniCenter helps bring operating and business efficiencies to the largest Wall Street dealers as well as to the smallest independent advisors.

Founded by a consortium of major broker-dealers and operational since 1999, TheMuniCenter has done business with more than 7,500 users at over 750 firms. Broker-dealer clients have further leveraged this content by connecting their own trading platforms to TheMuniCenter’s two-way API and thus pushing inventory to thousands of additional reps’ desktops. TheMuniCenter’s Private Label Web Service has enabled firms to create a tailored and cost effective order management system for traders and brokers. Combining TheMuniCenter’s liquidity with powerful software, firms can mark-up positions, add sales credits, and create client portfolio presentations with live inventory.

Live Trading
TheMuniCenter offers market participants the only source of live bond prices that are immediately executable. TheMuniCenter's trading platform enables users to trade secondary municipal, corporate, and agency securities electronically and to enter orders on new-issue Medium Term Notes (MTN’s), Certificates of Deposit (CD’s), and equity-linked notes. The marketplace is supported by full two-way price negotiation whereby users can post bids, offerings, and counters on every item listed. Unlike the bulletin boards that have proliferated over the years, TheMuniCenter’s functionality has given its users unprecedented access to executable markets, eliminating the need to chase down bids and offering that may or may not exist.

Inventory & Information
TheMuniCenter offers more than ten thousand live line items, in excess of ten billion par value. Corporates, Agencies, Municipals, CDs, and MTNs are all available on the site. Users of the site can search and sort the site’s extensive inventory in a variety of customizable ways. Financial Consultants can construct ladders, evaluate swap proposals, and perform advanced analytics on individual bonds and portfolios while traders can receive orders electronically, execute portfolio orders, and receive streaming trade information. Secondary bond insurance is available on select offerings from the industry’s leading providers. As users analyze a given security, they can see a bond's trade history, security indicative data, and current pricing data. Additionally, the "Reports" menu offers even more market information in the form of trade reports, state supply summaries, TheCenterList (a regularly updated listing of bonds on TheMuniCenter), scales, and trade momentum reports. Users can view markets and blotters in real time and can customize their view of the market to see what matters the most to them.

Distribution
TheMuniCenter currently does business with over 750 firms, representing over 7,500 users, in addition to the thousands of other advisors, registered representatives, and financial professionals who see TheMuniCenter's inventory via their trading desks. This customer base of registered representatives, traders, investment advisors, e-trading firms, and financial planners offers a robust distribution network that has an ongoing need for fixed income product. Content providers can realize greater turnover and liquidity by posting their offerings on TheMuniCenter's live marketplace.

Flexible Access
In addition to private label options, TheMuniCenter offers clients other connectivity options for accessing its data and content. For Internet based Solutions, TMC offers clients robust functionality, with no need to install software or download applets. TheMuniCenter offers a total web-based solution. For users who want direct connectivity, TheMuniCenter supports a connection through its proprietary applications programming interface (API), which allows firms to take the content and manage it their way.  TheMuniCenter’s API supports full negotiation while accepting and delivering its full product suite.  Additionally, TheMuniCenter supports FIX 4.4 for the posting of inventory to its site. Throughout the entire trade cycle, TheMuniCenter delivers and receives the critical data.

Straight-Through Processing
TheMuniCenter is a ticketless trading environment, where trade information is reported in real time to clearing firms and regulatory bodies. In an environment of increased trade and price transparency, TheMuniCenter enhances its users’ ability to comply with the requirements of a real-time trade reporting regime. Its proprietary API gives its customers a means to trade, report, and process trades instantly and to participate in a FIX-enabled marketplace.


Private Label
TheMuniCenter’s Web Service provides customers with the ability to private label its software to fit the “look and feel” of their web sites. With many options available, firms can place their logos, disclaimers, and colors into our framework. Additional flexibility comes in the form of mark-up matrices, whereby users have the ability to take TheMuniCenter’s wholesale inventory and apply both a risk premium and FC commission to every item offered. The trader’s risk premium is transparent to the FC, but the FC sees how much sales commission is available for each bond. A rules engine allows firms to filter items shown to reps; e.g., firms can keep their reps from seeing lower rated bonds. TheMuniCenter’s Web Service can provide significant savings via greater operational efficiency by helping to reduce paper entry, phone calls, and input errors. Salespeople can electronically send orders to traders, and traders can electronically acknowledge and confirm those orders.

Book managing software also allows dealers to manage multiple CD and MTN programs. Instead of having to enter the “deals of the week” manually, TheMuniCenter automatically handles that with content provided from the major street originators. All users have to do is decide which programs to market and show to their sales forces.