ASEAN+3 Bond Market Forum (ABMF)

The ASEAN+3 Bond Market Forum (ABMF) was established in May 2010 by the finance ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) plus the People’s Republic of China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea -collectively known as ASEAN+3 under the Asian Bond Markets Initiative (ABMI). The Forum is the only regional platform of which actions and recommendations are reported to the ASEAN+3 policy discussion. It functions to integrate the ASEAN+3 markets through standardization and harmonization of regulations and market practices as well as market infrastructures relating to cross-border bond transactions.

ABMF members comprise national members and experts as well as international experts and are drawn from public and private sector organisations.

Since its establishment, the ABMF has produced various outputs and created impacts. In 2012, the ABMF released the ASEAN+3 Bond Market Guide, the first officially recognized publication of bond market regulations and settlement procedures in ASEAN+3 economies. The market guide helped narrow information gaps and increase market transparency, which was often regarded as the biggest barrier to market entry. In 2014, to provide policy recommendations to standardize securities transaction flows in the region, ABMF published the Sub-Forum 1 (SF1) Phase 2 Report: Proposal on ASEAN+3 Multi-Currency Bond Issuance Framework (AMBIF) as a regionally standardized bond issuance framework, and the Sub-Forum 2 (SF2) Phase 2 Report: ASEAN+3 Information on Transaction Flows and Settlement Infrastructures. After the endorsement of both reports by the ASEAN+3 finance ministers in 2015, ABMF released two Phase 3 reports: Implementation of the AMBIF: ABMF SF1 Phase 3 Report, and Harmonization and Standardization of Bond Market Infrastructures in ASEAN+3: ABMF SF2 Phase 3 Report. The SF1 Phase 3 report contained the Single Submission Form (SSF) to be utilized in the markets participating in AMBIF and explained the procedures for issuing an AMBIF bond. The SF2 Phase 3 report (i) identified and agreed upon key transactional financial messages to be harmonized and standardized to facilitate cross-border bond transactions, and (ii) successfully demonstrated the readiness of the region to implement key international standards such as ISO 20022 by 2025. As a result, implementation of ISO 20022 was included as one of the strategic measures for financial integration in the ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint 2025.

ABMF meetings are held three times a year, bringing together more than 100 experts from the ministries of finance, central banks, securities market regulators, central securities depositories, securities exchanges and market operators, financial market associations as well as major financial institutions and IT vendors in the region. The forum is open to experts who are interested in bond market developments and regional financial cooperation.