Leading financial and environmental solutions provider

Connected for sustainable success

For companies, governments, and investors around the world AFS generates ideas, offers advisory services and tailored & electronic intermediary solutions. With over 170 years of experience, entrepreneurship, and collaboration, we developed a unique high-quality network with deep, embedded market knowledge. We provide our clients with investing, compliance and sustainability services and access to all relevant financial and environmental markets.

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Energy

AFS Energy is a leading environmental solution provider. From the beginning to the end of your renewable energy strategy or carbon reduction transition we provide you with a pallet of service and a combination of advice and support in procurement, and trading opportunities.

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Interest

The AFS Interest Rate department dates back more than 170 years and is one of the largest independent Money and Fixed Income brokers in Europe with a global reach.
With over 45 specialists the Interest Rate department serves over 2,500 professional and eligible clients globally, from financial institutions to governments and supranational agencies

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Execution and Custody Services

AFS Execution and Custody Services acts as an independent agency-only multi asset execution intermediary and custodian for the investment industry.

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Electronic Venues

For the sake of transparency and efficiency AFS is moving conventional brokerage and financing mediation in the primary and secondary market onto regulated OTF and MTF venues.

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"Our clients always come first. We serve them through our global network, powered by our values, and a shared purpose of advancing sustainable economic growth and financial opportunity."

3000+

Active clients with more than 15 governments

150+

FTE with more than 25 nationalities

90M+

Tons C02 offset

70+

Different instruments, services, and products

50+

Different countries

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News & Research

The largest sustainable investment platform in the Netherlands is ready for Europe

AFS Group will start to provide Platform Market Infrastructure to DuurzaamInvesteren.nl, the largest sustainable investment platform in the Netherlands.

The ECB’s new interest rate framework/the Italian problem

Summary • With sizeable TLTRO maturities this year and TLTRO-created reserves all but disappearing less than a year from now, reserves in the Italian banking system will fall to uncomfortably low levels before an acute shortage emerges in early 2024. Already next June, we estimate that the Liquidity Coverage Ratio of significant banks in Italy will fall by 50 percentage points By March 2024, it will be below 100. The ECB will judge this situation to be unwanted and unwarranted, forcing it to act. • The ECB will find itself at a crossroads by the coming summer. We see three options ranked in order of likelihood: • In the second half of 2023, the ECB will take a leaf out of Bank of England’s playbook. The ECB will align its deposit rate with its main borrowing rate, the MRO rate. This will allow the ECB to seamlessly cover both anticipated and unanticipated reserve shortfalls in parts of the Euro Area banking system while shrinking its balance sheet with Quantitative Tightening and TLTROs as they come due. More importantly, the ECB will prevent a bifurcation of money market rates between member states where bank reserves are relatively high and where they are relatively low. At the same time, the ECB will keep its operational framework simple and prevent US-like liquidity crunches; • Stick with the current framework, which will further fragment monetary policy transmission, but which will still prevent a liquidity crunch while preventing potential communication problems surrounding aligning the deposit rate with the MRO-rate; • A blast from the past: 1-week deposit tenders or their newer version: 1-week ECB certificates. The ECB would pay a heavy price for mopping up reserves where they are most plentiful: in the core Euro Area countries. The national central banks will experience increased operating losses, while risks of a US-like money market breakdown rise. • In each scenario, we see odds of the ECB instituting a standing facility for nonbanks as very, very remote. • Regardless, because of TLTRO repayments and Quantitative Tightening, the ESTR-deposit rate spread should narrow markedly in the second half of the year.

ECB May 2023 Preview: hawkish Mojo

Summary • With the ‘Angst of the Month’ – the failure of SVB bank and Credit Suisse – firmly in the rearview mirror, expect the ECB to rediscover its hawkish mojo. Relatively speaking of course, because this is the Lagarde ECB after all, not the Weidmann ECB that could have been (more on that on the final page); • Our call: despite a 50bps rate hike back firmly on the table, we expect a compromise: a 25bps hike on Thursday May 4, but with hawkish guidance that there is no stopping the rate hike train yet. The ECB will tee up another quarter point hike for the June meeting. And Lagarde & Co will lean towards more hikes over the summer. Core inflation and wage growth are simply way too high, offsetting improvements in the data elsewhere; • Everything revolves around core inflation. Just two days before the meeting we will get the preliminary inflation figures for April. Furthermore, the ECB will pay close attention to the Bank Lending Survey that is released the same day. Thus, our call can become obsolete very quickly; • This report is divided in two parts. In the first three pages we discuss the economic backdrop that functions as the input to the Governing Council’s decision. Readers who are less interested in the economic raison d'etre of our call can simply skip to the final paragraph on page 4 and read two more pages on the nitty gritty of the meeting.

Careers

At AFS, we believe our greatest asset is our people. It is only with the dedication and determination of our people that we can provide the best possible service to our clients.

We look for junior and experienced professionals with a passion for excellence and entrepreneurship, who believe in the power of teamwork, integrity and leadership.

Get in touch

Contact our recruiters
Email: recruitment@afsgroup.nl        

Contact AFS Group
Phone: +31(0) 20 570 7200      Email: info@afsgroup.nl