What is the Electronic Municipal Market Access?

National Municipal Securities Repositories and EMMA

Municipalities on both ends of a lease transaction can benefit from the lease.

Nationally recognized municipal securities information repositories (NRMSIR) collect bond issuance and disclosure materials for access by the public, acting like a cloud-based library of municipal issuances.

Electronic Municipal Market Access (EMMA) has been the official source for municipal securities disclosures and data since 2009 when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) made EMMA the official repository for such data. There are nationally run and state run NRMSIRs but most of the municipal capital market relies on EMMA’s information.

EMMA allows investors to find municipal issuers’ current and past issuances using the securities CUSIP numbers. EMMA contains a variety of information such as trading activity for municipal bonds, official statements, refunded issues, financial disclosures, and event-based ongoing disclosures.

None of the documents stored on EMMA are reviewed by the MSRB or the SEC; instead, most documents are reviewed by either in-house or external lawyers.

The security-specific information provided on EMMA includes:

• Offering documents for most municipal securities issued since 1990
• Advance refunding documents
• Issuer financial disclosures such as Annual Comprehensive Financial Reports (ACFR)
• Continuing disclosures about material information or events related to the issuer and security
• Issue trading histories such as prices and other data
• Additional disclosures voluntarily provided by issuers

EMMA also provides market transparency data such as:

• Real-time prices and yields for bonds
• Interest rates for municipal securities
• Third-party yield curves and indices
• Calendar of upcoming municipal offerings

Example:

The City of Charlotte, NC has refunded eleven General Obligation issues since 2009. In order for investors to be able to track down which bonds have been refunded, the city posted the Official Statements of all the refunding transactions on EMMA.   

What’s important here?

EMMA increases transparency in the municipal securities market. It provides free access to hundreds of thousands of disclosure documents and other information for investors. EMMA is recognized by the National Federation of Municipal Analysts (NFMA) and the National Association of State Treasurers' (NAST) State Debt Management Network (SDMN). It acts as a free service to investors and municipalities to research municipal securities and stay current on relevant issues.