Tradeweb Markets Inc (NASDAQ:TW) today announced it will expand its trading link with CFETS under the Bond Connect channel on September 24 to allow mainland China onshore institutions to invest in Hong Kong’s fixed income markets.

Tradeweb was the first platform to enable offshore investors to buy and sell Chinese onshore bonds via its fully electronic request-for-quote (RFQ) trading link to Northbound Bond Connect. More than $900 billion in CNY cash bonds trades has been done via Tradeweb since the launch of Bond Connect in July 2017.

Last year, Tradeweb once again partnered with the China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS) to deliver the first fully electronic RFQ access to China Interbank Bond Market (CIBM) Direct, another popular route for overseas investors connecting to and trading in the Chinese onshore bond market.

Lee Olesky, CEO of Tradeweb Markets, said:

“This latest milestone is the result of Tradeweb’s close collaboration with CFETS to create access channels that help open up China’s financial markets. Tradeweb is at the forefront of digitizing and modernizing fixed income trading, so we look forward to working collaboratively with local participants to improve their access to liquidity and workflow efficiency in these markets.”

Yi Zhang, President of CFETS, commented:

“We are pleased to be partnering again with Tradeweb to achieve Bond Connect’s fundamental objective to serve as a mutual access pathway for fixed income investors in mainland China and overseas. The success of Northbound trading is proof that electronic execution is the way forward for bond market participants, and we are excited to see how it can further enhance onshore investors’ Southbound trading experience.”

Through the new Southbound Bond Connect solution between CFETS and Tradeweb, onshore institutional investors can conduct price discovery, trade negotiation and trade execution with Tradeweb’s network of regional and international liquidity providers in the offshore bond markets, via fully-electronic RFQ. The expansion of Bond Connect provides onshore institutions with more ways to diversify their fixed income investment portfolios.

Tradeweb has been regulated in Hong Kong and Singapore since 2004. Its first Asia local currency products – Japanese Government Bonds and Yen Interest Rate Swaps – went live in 2008. Three years later, Tradeweb expanded institutional Credit trading into Asia.

In 2014, Tradeweb hosted the first electronic JSCC-cleared yen swap transaction by a Japanese bank, followed by the first regulated Yen swap trade on its Electronic Trading Platform (ETP) a year later. In 2018, Tradeweb became the first Bond Connect platform to launch portfolio allocation.

The firm also operates an Asia-listed ETF marketplace and an EFP (Exchange for Physical) platform in the Australian market. In line with its ongoing commitment and investment to its growing presence in the region, Tradeweb hired James Sun earlier this year to head the Asia business from its Shanghai office. Other Tradeweb office locations in Asia include Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore.