Stock Exchange of Mauritius launches new Automated Trading System

The Stock Exchange of Mauritius (SEM) launched, on 20 May, a new Automated Trading System (ATS), named ‘Avento’, together with a new online trading app, named mySEM.

Avento is intended to give new impetus to the SEM’s internationalisation strategy by:

• Enhancing SEM’s attractiveness as a listing and trading platform for Exchange Traded Funds.
• Enabling international brokers to connect to SEM platform as remote members and attract more international order-flows and enhance liquidity.
• Allowing the SEM to enter the derivatives space and plan for new products, including futures and options on foreign underlying.

The Avento system is also designed to assist the Financial Services Commission in its supervisory role through a new surveillance system, called Clarity, which will enable the SEM to identify in real-time alerts relating to market abuse, manipulative practices and other irregular trading activities.

SEM chief executive Sunil Benimadhu said the new ATS came 21 years after SEM had made history by becoming the first exchange in Africa to set up a fully automated exchange platform from trading to clearing and settlement.

The SEM received an implementation grant from the African Development Bank (AfDB) as one of seven African exchanges chosen by the bank to be part of its African Exchanges Linkage Project, which is designed to improve financial integration in Africa and enhance secondary market liquidity. Avento would facilitate this integration process and create space for more global order flows to converge to SEM’s platform from the other African exchanges.

Avento is further accompanied by a new on-line trading app, the mySEM app, which can be accessed from a smartphone, allowing investors to follow the market real-time, order real-time as well as login to Central Depository and Settlement Co. (CDS) accounts and access interactive charting of a company’s shares over one year.

“With the appropriate education, mobile-based trading will definitely help make the stock market more accessible to the public and pursue government’s vision of building a nation of Investors, an inclusive Mauritius leaving nobody behind,” said Benimadhu.

Financial Services Minister Mahen Kumar Seeruttun said Avento would move the evolution of the Mauritius International Financial Centre on to another level as a business-friendly and conducive environment for investments and reinforce its position as a reliable facilitator for investments into Africa.

“The natural consequences of such innovative development for policy-makers and market players are the contribution of the capital market to our country’s economic development and ultimately to wealth creation for our people,” he said.