Bloomberg has introduced an automated workflow for Japanese Government Bond (JGB) Market-on-Close trading, completing what it says is the first fully automated JGB trade using the functionality.

The new workflow is aligned with BB3P, the Hikene Trading reference rate used for JGB Market-on-Close transactions, and is designed to give investors greater certainty around execution at a specified market close while reducing tracking error.

The functionality is available through Bloomberg Electronic Markets and combines its Bid/Offer List Trading capability with Rule Builder, the firm's trade automation tool.

Through an integrated order and execution management workflow using TSOX, clients can establish predefined execution parameters and automatically route orders when those conditions are met. The approach is intended to reduce the need for manual intervention and improve consistency when trading around the JGB market reference.

Yudhveer Chaudhry, head of Emerging Markets, FX, Commodities & Digital Assets at BlackRock, said the combination of Market-on-Close execution and rule-based automation represents a significant development for the JGB market.

He said the workflow could help investors reduce transaction costs and improve execution consistency by enabling more systematic trading against the BB3P reference rate, particularly during periods of elevated volumes.

Bloomberg's Japan Enterprise Sales Head Norman Tweeboom said the firm is continuing to expand its Market-on-Close capabilities globally as it seeks to improve automation and efficiency across fixed-income trading.

The JGB workflow forms part of Bloomberg's broader Market-on-Close offering, which also covers US Treasuries, Canadian government bonds, UK gilts and European government debt.

The addition of automated JGB execution gives institutional investors another way to integrate reference-rate trading into systematic fixed-income workflows, potentially reducing operational complexity in one of Asia's largest government bond markets.