The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board's EMMA website is getting a revamp this year, Chief Product Officer Brian Anthony told a Government Finance Officers Association Committee on Governmental Debt Management Saturday.
"We're in the final stages of development," Anthony said as he previewed the new features for the committee.
The MSRB will be introducing an advanced search engine that enables natural language search, he said, and improving the functionality of the issuer search feature.
The organization will also offer expanded alert capabilities on EMMA beyond just CUSIPs, and user customization options, Anthony said.
The revamp involves the reorganization of data so there's one main entry per issuer. Users will be able to see a list of all issues on one page, a list of associated obligors and a list of all the issues an entity is part of, according to the demonstration Saturday.
"We believe that these tools will help you find the information that you need easier and faster," Anthony said. He clarified: "this is not a new data source … It's really just reorganizing this information."
The natural language search allows users to comb through the text of both primary market and continuing disclosures, to reach relevant areas of a document. Users can also search by the type of disclosures — cybersecurity, for example.
Anthony credited the MSRB's transition to the cloud with providing the foundation of these new capabilities.
Asked if EMMA could display a graph of the yield curve, he said, "We do have some limitations with the rating agencies," but the MSRB is talking to rating agencies in hopes of providing such a feature down the road.
The process of modernizing EMMA has entailed two main steps: the cloud migration in 2018, and a 2021 rewrite of systems to be more modular and cloud native, Anthony said. The MSRB is nearing the end of that modernization effort.
The organization does not have additional major technology initiatives queued, he said, but it is committed to continually improving its cybersecurity posture.
"We definitely hope to be able to respond to threats more quickly," Anthony said. Cybersecurity is the second largest category of the MSRB's technology and data spending.
The EMMA website has grown in recent years. EMMA received 49 million pageviews and about 10,000 visitors per day last year, Anthony said. It has about 31,000 registered users.
Also presenting Saturday was MSRB CFO Yetunde Olumide, who shared that MSRB rate card revenues are projected to drop from fiscal year 2026 to FY 2027 as the organization cut charges 45%.
Expenses are expected to grow 3.7% year-over-year, with the personnel budget comprising the largest share of spending.
Investment income increased from the FY 2026 budget, Olumide said.
