Allocated Bullion Solutions Pte Ltd (ABS), a global exchange for physical gold that offers both liquidity and technology solutions announced it is integrating its liquidity platform with post trade processing services from Markit in order to further automate the settlement of physical trades of precious metals.

The integration will allow mutual customers to benefit from enhanced straight through processing of precious metals trades. Trade execution notices from ABS will be transmitted electronically by MarkitSERV, Markit’s post trade processing platform, to trade booking and trade management systems used throughout the industry. More than 90 electronic trading venues use MarkitSERV in other asset classes for straight through processing, regulatory reporting and routing trades to clearinghouses.

Julian Chesser, Managing Director and head of Markit’s Processing business in Asia Pacific, said: “Working with ABS to automate post trade processing for precious metal demonstrates the flexibility of our platform which will support physical commodities for the first time.”

Seamus Donoghue, Chief Executive Officer of ABS, said: “ABS’s vision is to transform the global OTC physical gold market into an open, accessible and efficient market place. The wholesale market is burdened with manual processes that have limited the industry’s ability to scale their distribution. The ABS platform provides a groundbreaking centralized electronic platform to match, aggregate and route physical metal liquidity to and from multiple liquidity providers, venues and across products. Our integration with Markit is the next step in automating the post trade transaction process to provide straight through processing to significantly increase efficiency and reduce operational risks for bullion market participants.”