Winterflood Securities is featured in The Treasurer article, “Testing the Demand for Retail Investment” which explores the growing involvement of retail investors in the UK corporate bond and Gilt markets. The piece highlights how regulatory change and private sector innovation are helping to dismantle long-standing barriers to entry — and how Winterflood is at the forefront of this transformation.
Michael Smith, Head of Debt Capital Markets at Winterflood, reflected on the firm’s early commitment to this initiative:
“We recognised this shift over three years ago and began actively championing retail inclusion. The debate around whether retail should be involved is now behind us. I haven’t met anyone recently who still thinks it’s acceptable to exclude retail investors and wealth managers from listed investment-grade bonds. We’ve built the infrastructure to support issuers and investors.”
He added:
“We’ve now supported ten new-issue Gilts. Our infrastructure is designed to accommodate any bond — Gilts or corporates — and integrates seamlessly with existing wholesale practices. We build the retail intermediary book, settle a single ticket with the lead manager, then allocate across our retail intermediaries, settle, and crucially, make a market.”
“Providing trading and post-issuance transparency completes the full-service offering. If a corporate issuer opens its bonds to retail investors, there should be an expectation that the retail lead will support those bonds in the secondary market. That’s exactly what we do. We can show who’s trading and in what size, with granular, ticket-level data on all of the listed securities we trade — and the same will apply to bonds.”
Winterflood’s initiative includes collaboration with other UK Gilt-Edged Market Makers (GEMMs) and ongoing engagement with the UK Debt Management Office.
For more information or to discuss this topic in further detail, please contact: Michael Smith, Debt Capital Markets, Winterflood Securities.
