Index Industry Association (IIA), a global organization of index administrators, has announced the addition of three new members – CBOE Holdings (CBOE), China Central Depository & Clearing (CCDC) and the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE).

Richard Redding, chief executive officer of Index Industry Association.

IIA established itself as a not-for-profit organization in 2012 as a means for the index industry to advocate for independence and transparency in indices in order to serve the needs and interests of investors. According to the organization, the indices created by CBOE, CCDC and TSE all align with the IIA mission for indices to operate as the best measures of the markets, apart from any specific outcome.

Furthermore, CCDC and TSE represent the organization’s expansion of Asian-based members, and speak to the growing global interest in promoting best practices in the index industry.

Richard Redding, chief executive officer of IIA, commented: “The addition of CBOE, CSDC and TSE emphasizes the advantages that members of the Index Industry Association feel that investors will realize from educating the global investor community about the importance of proper index design, administration, maintenance, and calculation. We look forward to working together to promote standards across the industry as the importance of independent indices continues to grow.”

CBOE is a creator of index options and volatility indices. It also creates strategy performance indices to help investors track the performance of investment strategies that use options or volatility products to help manage risk and enhance yield. The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) Index, measuring implied volatility in the S&P 500 derived from options pricing, is the flagship of CBOE’s volatility franchise which includes more than three-dozen volatility-related benchmarks. CBOE currently publishes data on more than 30 strategy performance benchmark indices and CBOE’s Bats Europe exchange offers 39 benchmark indices across 15 major European markets.

CCDC is a central securities depository approved and owned by the State Council of China and is the only government bond depository authorized by the Ministry of Finance. ChinaBond pricing data is drawn from the central securities depository and published as the ChinaBond Index.  Since 2002, the ChinaBond family of indices has been a reference for the onshore Renminbi bond market. CCDC published more than 70 indices – and hundreds of sub-indices – on a daily basis, covering more than 30,000 constituents of the China domestic bond markets.

TSE, as a cash exchange operating subsidiary of Japan Exchange Group, provides a variety of index products that gauge the performance of the Japanese equities market, and are employed by investors and financial services firms worldwide. This includes the widely followed TOPIX Index, a leading reference for Japanese equities, representing over 1,800 stocks trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The exchange offers more than 300 indices, with composition determined by metrics including style, size, risk and sector.