.jpg)
American Financial Exchange® (AFX®), an electronic exchange for direct lending and borrowing for American financial institutions, announced today new daily, weekly and monthly record transaction volumes.
Highlights include:
- Records - The Exchange had a record day of $ 2.354 billion on March 28th; $8.612 billion for the week of March 25th – 29th; and $29.717 billion for the month of March. The volumes are outstanding across all its products.
- Volume growth - Volumes increased from a daily average of $356 million in the first quarter of 2018 to $1.452 billion by March 29, 2019 – growing 400% since 2018 and making the first quarter of 2019 a record quarter.
- Membership growth - The number of members increased from 83 at the end of the first quarter 2018 to 139 by March 29, 2019, a sixty-eight percent increase. Current AFX Membership is comprised of 116 banks and 23 non-banks with a presence in 48 states and Puerto Rico. There are 557 banks in the correspondent bank lending program, bringing the total of AFX members to 696 institutions. This means that AFX reaches approximately 12% of American depository institutions.
- Sectoral diversity and products - AFX membership also includes non-banks such as insurance companies, broker-dealers, private equity firms, corporations, hedge funds and money managers. Current AFX markets are overnight unsecured loans, 7-day secured loans, a deposits product, and a correspondent loan market.
- AMERIBOR® - AFX facilitates the determination of AMERIBOR®, a transaction-based interest rate benchmark. The rate is calculated as the weighted average daily volume in the AFX overnight unsecured loan market. ServisFirst Bank in Birmingham, Alabama and Brookline Bank in Boston, Massachusetts are the first banks to index commercial loans to AMERIBOR®. Others AFX Members are also in the process of using AMERIBOR® to benchmark new issuance assets. AMERIBOR® enables banks and financial institutions to optimize asset-liability management by matching assets and liabilities through the benchmark AMERIBOR®. The rate is now available on Bloomberg terminals under the ticker symbol AMBOR.
