The $4.5 trillion U.S. municipal bond market has been one of the slowest to adopt electronic trading—for many good reasons—but that's changing.
In addition to what Wells Fargo Securities' Annie Cheslin describes as a "very robust electronic trading platform," the managing director of high-grade municipal trading, who focuses on trading tax-exempt muni bonds for institutional clients, said that artificial intelligence (AI) is adding to how the bank and its customers survey the market for debt issued by municipalities, cities and governments.
"We are definitely using AI tools to be a better liquidity provider for our customer to provide tighter bid-ask [spreads]," she said. "Clients are definitely curious how we're integrating AI into how we're trading. Obviously, AI is going to be a huge tool for data management and how we can harness some of that information through trades and if we can analyze trends and share that with our clients."
Timing is on her side: 2025 was a record in the muni market.
"It was the fourth consecutive year of record trade count, a record for par amount traded in fixed-rate securities, a second consecutive year of record new issuance, and a record year for net inflows into exchange traded funds," the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board said in its
Additionally, trade size declined last year to about $214,000 from $229,000 in 2024, MSRB said. "This is consistent with a market that is becoming increasingly more electronic, driven by strong demand from individual investors," the group said.
Wells Fargo ranked sixth in 2025 across all bond issuance for senior managers with $35.7 billion, according to LSEG data. Year to date, Cheslin said Wells Fargo is number five for new issuance in the muni market. The bank considers its muni business as part of its markets unit. Total market revenue in 2025 rose 3% to $7.1 billion from $6.9 billion the year earlier, according to Wells Fargo's
Cheslin said the key to her job is engaging in "creative problems solving" and listening to clients.
"I sit at the intersection of Wells Fargo's balance sheet and our customer relationships," she said. "I kind of always joke, like both personally and professionally, let's be solutions oriented. At the end of the day, it's really listening to the objective of your client and trying to figure out what is going to serve them best. Ultimately, everything comes back to how we can solve a problem for our clients and how we can provide them liquidity."
