Sioux County, Iowa Uses YieldAuction

Grant Street Group, the Pittsburgh based Internet auction house for fixed-income securities, recently used its money market investment platform, YieldAuction, to solicit $225,000 of CDs from Iowa banks for Sioux County. Traditionally, government entities and school districts solicit bids from banks via phone. Using the YieldAuction website, state and local governments are able to solicit bids easily and efficiently from a larger number of banks via the Internet and to conduct an on-line auction in which these banks bid against each other for the deposit. The state or local government gets the benefit of a higher investment rate from the combination of increased competition and the auction format. Solicitation amounts range from $100,000 (or less in some instances) to millions of dollars. In the Sioux County auctions, 6 banks from Iowa submitted 47 bids during the two 30 minute auctions.