Atlanta-headquartered Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the owner of the NYSE Arca, has made several enhancements to the ICE ETF Hub custom basket program.

Peter Borstelmann, Head of ICE ETF Hub.

ICE ETF Hub is an industry-wide, open architecture, technology solution, offering a more standardized and simplified process for the creation and redemption of ETFs.

The custom basket program, which is available for all US-listed domestic equity and fixed income ETFs, utilizes an automated functionality that allows market participants to screen, communicate, and assemble custom baskets with issuers electronically.

This functionality particularly helps fixed income participants transition away from the cumbersome manual and bespoke processes in use today.

According to ICE, the latest enhancements to the program include two new functionalities – one that offers the ability to pre-screen baskets against lists and indices and a second ‘countering’ functionality that delivers more flexibility in negotiating custom baskets.

Additionally, the ICE ETF Hub recently completed its connection to ICE FI Select, allowing traders to source bonds in the secondary cash market via ICE Bonds’ liquidity pools, and launched the ICE Chat functionality to support the custom basket workflow.

ICE further notes that four new market makers have joined the program including Brownstone Investment Group, Flow Traders, Sumridge, and Wolverine with additional firms expected to join the platform in the near future.

Peter Borstelmann, Head of ICE ETF Hub, commented, “The addition of these firms demonstrates the ETF industry’s desire for, and commitment to, increased efficiencies within the ETF primary market which ultimately enables issuers to offer more innovation to the investment community.”