ING, Bloomberg Launch Emerging Market Indices

Dutch investment bank ING this week announced the launch of a new proprietary global emerging markets indices, aimed at “giving its clients a new route to get exposure to emerging markets currencies in a simpler and transparent way.”

In partnership with data and global index provider Bloomberg, the new offering will consist of a dozen new indices as well as increased access to emerging market currencies. Bloomberg will be responsible for providing the independent calculations and administration of these indices. In addition to leveraging Bloomberg’s expertise in strategy index development, calculation and administration, ING selected Bloomberg’s BFIX data source to use in the index, as it is an established and independent benchmark for currency rates that are widely used across FX markets.

“We are delighted to support ING UK in launching these emerging markets FX indices, Ji Zhuang, Head of Custom Strategies business at Bloomberg said in a statement. “As regulations evolve and investors increasingly demand more benchmark transparency, we are helping firms across the globe turn their investment strategies into indices, and offering outsourcing of in-house index calculation and administration to our managed platform.”

Bloomberg ING Global Emerging Markets FX Indices effectively enables clients of any size to focus on how emerging market currencies have performed against the US dollar. In addition, the indices track the performance of a basket of 12 equally-weighted emerging market currencies against the US dollar.

There will also be both a long-only and long-short versions available to trade. The long-short version enhances returns by applying a volatility based risk filter, according to Bloomberg.