News & Updates

Beginning October 2022, Municipal Bond Information Services ( MBIS ) will supply data for the Center for Municipal Finance at the University of Chicago. The Center is part of the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, whose mission is to bring empirical, data-driven research to policy studies. MBIS CEO Tim Tatum commented, “It has been a pleasure to work with and support the Harris School in the area of municipal bonds and public finance.” MBIS data will power the online indices for cities, counties, and school districts , part of the Center’s Data Dashboard. According to Wesley Janson, a graduate student working on the project, "MBIS was the only place we could get comprehensive enough data for us to create this index. Because of their robust historical trading data, we were able to create an accurate measure of market sentiment towards some of the largest municipal bond issuers.” The Data Dashboard aligns with the Center’s mission to promote engagement with the financial issues faced by state and local governments both in the U.S. and globally. Janson explained, "These municipal bond indices are the backbone of our data dashboard, offering timely information to journalists, researchers, issuers, and investors. We aim to be the one-stop shop for all things municipal finance." Data from the Center’s indices have already appeared in reporting by Bloomberg and Crain’s Chicago Business . MBIS aggregates and delivers over 400,000 pre-trade bids wanted and offering daily, giving the largest set of data available today. The company was founded as a consortium of eleven municipal security trading firms who assembled to aggregate their market data. In 2022, MBIS became an independent entity headquartered in Aurora, IL.