KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. SEBI has recently launched 'Bond Central', a centralized database portal for corporate bonds in India, developed in collaboration with the OBPP Association and Market Infrastructure Institutions.

2. Bond Central provides investors with comprehensive information about bonds, including issuer details, coupon rates, credit ratings, and maturity dates, enhancing transparency and informed decision-making.

3. The platform offers advanced search filters, allowing users to search bonds by coupon rate, credit rating, and maturity, among other criteria.

4. While Bond Central is a significant advancement, it has a handful of areas for improvement, such as data accuracy, timeliness, and the inclusion of additional features like SDIs and filters for listed/unlisted bonds.

5. BondScanner, a tool by ALT Investor, complements Bond Central by allowing investors to compare bond deals across platforms, further aiding in making informed investment decisions.

On one of her last official days as the SEBI chairperson, Madhabi Puri Buch, the outgoing chief of India’s market regulator, announced a significant step towards India’s bond market. She recently launched Bond Central – a free and centralized database portal for corporate bonds in India.

You can checkout Bond Central by clicking here. Launched by SEBI, this platform has been developed by Online Bond Platform Providers Association (OBPP Association), in collaboration with Market Infrastructure Institutions (MIIs-Stock Exchanges and Depositories).

For the unversed, the OBPP Association of India collectively represents platforms that facilitate the online buying and selling of bonds. It aims to promote transparency, advocate for regulatory policies and enhance investor protection so that India’s bond market can grow and penetrate further. The association was established last year (in May 2024).

Coming back to the new tool, you, as an investor, may wonder how Bond Central can be helpful in your journey towards bond investments? Well, that is exactly what we will talk about in this blog. We will walk you through the key elements of this platform, what works and what does not work in the case of this newly launched platform.

How Bond Central Can Help Investors?

Get comprehensive details about every issuer and bond at one place

If you visit a particular bond platform, be it Grip Invest, Wint Wealth, GoldenPi, etc, it showcases particular deals which the platform itself is offering for that particular issuer, right? For example, these platforms can have bond deals from issuers like Akara, Muthoot, Navi Finserve and Keertana. But what if you want to know all the bonds being offered by a particular issuer, like Navi Finserv, at a single place? That is exactly where Bond Central can help you by showcasing you all the bonds being offered by an issuer.

Here’s an example of that. When you search for Muthoot Capital Services Ltd, Bond Central shows all the bond deals being offered by the issuer, along with its coupon rate, ISIN, credit rating, and maturity date.

Search through advanced filters like coupon rate, credit rating and maturity.

Besides the basic option to search for a bond/issuer through its name and ISIN, Bond Central also offers advanced filters like coupon rate, maturity period, unsecured/secured nature of bond, and credit rating. So, you can select either one of these filters to get information about all bonds available for that filter, or even apply two or more filters at once! For example, here, we applied two filters- one is of 9%-11% coupon rate, and second is the credit rating of AA+. So, as visible in this screenshot, the platform shows list of bonds that match the coupon rate and credit rating chosen as filter.

Deep dived information about each issuer and bond

Last but not the least, Bond Central goes the extra mile by offering you detailed information about every bond deal, such as its debenture trustee, return comparison with G-Sec, tax saving component, payment frequency, redemption type, etc. This acts as a testament that the aim behind all this database is to enhance transparency and facilitate informed decision making amongst investors and other market participants.

Ways In Which Bond Central Can Improve

While it's true that these are still early days for the newly launched platform, we have come across the following areas in which the tool has scope of improvement:

1. Not yet a fully comprehensive and accurate source for data

   Although Bond Central currently has compiled data of over 680 issuers and nearly 7,000 ISINs, it has not yet reached that mark where it can be treated as a golden source of comprehensive data for all bonds. We found two key reasons behind this. First is that the data is not entirely accurate. Take a look at these examples. When we selected the 0-1 year maturity period for the tool, only the bonds which have a maturity of less than or up to one year period should be shown on the platform, right? But the tool shows bonds with maturity of even 3 years, 4 years, 8 years, etc. (check these screenshots). So this seems to be a bug that the platform needs to fix.

Secondly, the platform mentions that only listed corporate bonds are available, but even the data of unlisted bonds is available on Bond Central. For example, the tool shows data of Bajaj Aviation’s unlisted bond as well as Blusmart’s unlisted bond. But it remains to be seen whether all unlisted bonds are available on this platform.

2. Data is not updated frequently

   Another pain point is that the platform does not have recently updated data live on its platform. Even as on 3rd March 2025, the tool has data updated as on 31st January 2025, which is more than a month old. So any fresh bond deals of issuers after this date would not be visible on Bond Central despite being live on various OBPP’s websites.

3. No filter for bifurcating listed and unlisted bonds

   Since the platform is showing unlisted bonds as well on its platform, it should have a separate filter for that too, so that investors can choose listed/unlisted bonds as per their investment preference.

4. SDIs not included in the tool

   Given the rising popularity and acceptance of SDIs (Securitized Debt Instruments) in India’s debt market, it would be great if Bond Central also includes SDIs into its tool in near future.

But again, as we mentioned before as well, we are pretty sure that all these areas of improvement are totally fixable, given that it's a newly launched platform, and the feedback from us and other industry players can serve as suggestions for the OBPP association and SEBI to further improve this otherwise super helpful tool.

Check Out BondScanner: A Tool To Unlock Best Bond Deals

Besides this newly-launched Bond Central tool by SEBI and OBPP Association of India, which is acting as a centralised database portal for corporate bonds, you can also checkout BondScanner, an industry-first bond comparison tool which helps you get the best returns for your investment.

BondScanner was launched by ALT Investor in December 2024. Instead of browsing hundreds of bonds across multiple bond platforms, you, as an investor, can compare them in a since glance, through our tool.

With the BondScanner tool, you can find the best bond yields. With just a few clicks, you can compare bond returns across platforms, filter by issuer or rating, and find the best deals. Here’s the link to BondScanner.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we all can agree that Bond Central represents a significant advancement in India's bond market, offering investors a centralized platform to access comprehensive information about corporate bonds. While the platform boasts several beneficial features, such as detailed issuer information and advanced search filters, there are areas for improvement, including data accuracy and timeliness. As the platform evolves, incorporating feedback from users and industry stakeholders will be crucial in enhancing its functionality and reliability.

Additionally, tools like BondScanner complement Bond Central by providing investors with the ability to compare bond deals across platforms, further empowering them to make informed investment decisions. As these tools continue to develop, they hold the potential to significantly enhance transparency and accessibility in the bond market, ultimately benefiting investors and the broader financial ecosystem.

Hope this blog helped you learn about the new Bond Central platform. Thank you for your time. We would love it if you could join our spam free Whatsapp community!

Please note that this is an opinion blog and not an official research or investment advice. This blog aims to help retail investors make an informed decision when thinking of alternative investments such as bonds. The blog neither encourages nor discourages you from investing in any particular platform or property or any asset class.