Secondary Market Municipal Bond Insurance
EMAIL A SPECIALIST: ► Richard Cassata ► Jason Falzon ► Leonard Lasek
Assured Guaranty offers insurance for approved municipal bonds trading in the secondary market or held by investors. Secondary market insurance allows investors to meet portfolio credit requirements cost-effectively, obtain greater comfort on positions they want to retain, or increase the value of securities they plan to sell.
To be eligible, the bonds must meet the underwriting criteria of the insuring company. Because we have pre-approved thousands of credits, we can provide immediate quotes for qualified institutional investors and traders. The pre-approved list generally includes the most recent new issues that qualified for insurance in the municipal market. Upon request, we also consider transactions that are not currently on the pre-approved list.
We offer secondary market insurance in two ways:
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Institutional investors and broker-dealers may call our Secondary Market Desk at 212 408 6067 for secondary market insurance. The desk offers insurance for both the pre-approved issues in the searchable database on this page and for other issues, subject to our approval process.
In addition to the search engine below, two electronic platforms provide means to identify pre-approved bonds:
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Within DIVER Advisor, if a bond has been pre-approved for secondary market insurance by AGM, the Assured Guaranty logo will display in the gold bar at the top of the screen and link to contact information for Assured Guaranty’s Secondary Market Desk. The desk can provide definitive price quotes for secondary market insurance on bonds that have been pre-approved. DIVER Advisor subscribers can log in here.
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Users of Bloomberg Terminals can find indicative insurance pricing and availability information for AGM insurance on the Bloomberg All Quotes (ALLQ) page and then contact our secondary market desk by telephone, email or over the Bloomberg messaging network. To view insurance pricing, users simply load a nine-digit municipal CUSIP and navigate to the All Quotes page with the command ALLQ (e.g., {123456789 Muni ALLQ
}). Indicative prices for AGM to insure $1 million in par amount appear in the Ask Price column, expressed as the price per bond. The amount of insurance potentially available is also displayed if the user activates the Show Bid/Ask Sizes column in the ALLQ Settings menu. To initiate a purchase of insurance, users may contact Assured Guaranty’s secondary market desk over the Bloomberg network by sending messages to Richard Cassata, rmc176@bloomberg.net or Leonard Lasek, llasek@bloomberg.net.
Assured Guaranty does not sell bonds, and we do not offer bond insurance directly to individual bondholders. If you are an individual who wishes to own insured bonds, please contact your broker or financial advisor.
CUSIP identifiers have been provided by CUSIP Global Services, managed on behalf of the American Bankers Association by Standard & Poor’s Financial Services, LLC, and are not for use or dissemination in a manner that would serve as a substitute for any CUSIP service. The CUSIP Database, 2011 American Bankers Association. “CUSIP” is a registered trademark of the American Bankers Association.