Treasurer’s office unveils new website for municipal bond investors

By Beth Healy, Globe Staff

The state has introduced a new website to give more information to municipal bond investors, with a goal of driving down Massachusetts’s borrowing costs by providing greater transparency.

The website, massbondholder.com, has more than 30,000 pages of reports, audits and summaries from different states offices, including the Department of Revenue, the treasurer’s office, the executive office for administration and finance, the state pension fund and others.

Treasurer Steven Grossman, in a statement, said, “We’re confident that providing better disclosure tools to investors will allow the state to borrow at lower rates and reduce costs for taxpayers..”

The website is geared to institutional investors, such as mutual funds, that buy large amounts of bonds. It provides investors new tools, the state said, such as software to analyze the Commonwealth’s data.

Over the past two years, the Commonwealth has revamped its disclosure practices to include a schedule of when bond information is published, regular live investor calls and an annual investor conference to showcase the state’s financial standing, Grossman’s office said.

Last fall, the Treasury oversaw two bond offerings it called “highly competitive,” including a $1.2 billion short-term borrowing deal with an interest rate of .098.