But the rules are likely to be tweaked by early next year to allow retail investors to buy wholesale bonds, although it is likely that they would only have access to highly rated bonds so as to reduce risk. “We cannot place the NPA requirement on the investors when we want to talk about opening up to retail investors,” Kamarudin said. It is the third-largest market in Asia (relative to gross domestic product) and the world’s largest sukuk market. Of the RM1.3 trillion universe, RM695bil is from the government bond and sukuk market, while the corporate and sukuk market size is RM585bil. Investors of corporate bonds and sukuk are predominantly from the domestic institutional market (97%).

Source: The Star November 06, 2017 23:26 UTC