The Covered Bond Label Foundation is proposing issuers use macros with the 2019 Harmonised Transparency Template to aid comparability, according to the EMF-ECBC’s Luca Bertalot, who told a plenary on Wednesday that four more Labels including a new jurisdiction should be announced shortly.

The latest annual update to the Harmonised Transparency Template (HTT) used by Label issuers to disclose cover pool information was agreed by the Label committee last Tuesday (11 September).

“The annual update of HTT is an extremely important exercise aimed at maintaining the quality of Cover Pool asset disclosures at the highest possible level and in line with market best practices,” said Bertalot, secretary general of the European Mortgage Federation-European Covered Bond Council (EMF-ECBC) and Covered Bond Label Foundation administrator.

“The strong market consensus to provide investors with a robust market instrument for their due diligence, fine-tuned every year and immediately implemented by all Covered Bond Label issuers, demonstrates the Covered Bond Label’s commitment to remaining the leading benchmark for market transparency and disclosure.”

He said the 2019 HTT has been maintained as close as possible to the previous iteration to ensure stability for issuers. But he said the HTT – which is supplied in Excel format – had been “cleaned” to make it more suitable to be used with macros.

“We want to propose to our issuers next year to use a macro that will allow them to provide very standardised charts for comparing HTTs around the globe,” said Bertalot, “because the HTT is used in Canada, in Singapore, and we hopefully will have a new jurisdiction joining the Covered Bond Label soon.”

He added that at least four new Labels are in the pipeline, on top of the current 121 covering some EUR1.6tr of outstanding covered bonds.