NASD OTC Exchange Migrates to New Trading Platform

By Adedapo Adesanya

The NASD Over-the-Counter (OTC) Securities Exchange has announced its migration to a new trading platform known as NASD Electronic Trading System (N-ETS).

In a notice, the exchange said the movement to the new platform will take effect from Monday, November 23, 2020 (today) and that investors and brokers will no longer be able to access the old interface known as the legacy system Bi-lateral Interdealer Trading System (BiTS).

According to the bourse for the buying and selling of unlisted stocks in Nigeria, all the relevant information previously on BiTS will be moved to the N-ETS from today.

It explained that the new system brings more functionalities to ensure a more efficient trading experience for market participants and enables trading of new asset classes which erstwhile were not available OTC market.

The NASD Exchange noted that the platform will provide some specialised functions including: automated matching engine, multi-securities support, order and quote market models, order management gateway and routing support.

Others are centralised order management, secure data interchange, standard messaging for market data operated maintenance support (OMS), and user friendly interface.

The company noted that last month, it facilitated a series of training sessions for market participants to acquaint them with the capacity and functionalities of the new trading platform.

“All participants who attended the training sessions will automatically be migrated to the new platform. Any participants who have not attended the training sessions will be required to do so before they can access N-ETS,” the statement said.

Business Post reports that the market closed in the flat territory last Friday with the market capitalisation at a year high of N547.46 billion while the NASD Unlisted Securities Index (NSI) remained unchanged at 736.53 points.

The NASD OTC Exchange is gradually becoming popular with investors in the capital market in Nigeria because of the new initiatives put in place to attract players in the equities and debt securities market.