Cboe, BlackRock and IHS Markit Plan First US Corporate Bond Index Futures

Martin Small, head of U.S. iShares at BlackRock, said in the same statement that the products will represent "a quantum leap forward towards better bond markets …  that can help improve "price transparency and liquidity of corporate bond markets."

The index futures products will also provide investors with "broad coverage to hedge against risk," said Aram Flores, the global head of indices at IHS Markit.

Bond investors have traditionally used credit default swaps to hedge credit risk in the bond market, but their use has declined since the financial crisis, in which they played key roles in the failure of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and AIG, which was the only one of the three to be bailed out by the government. Since then, some investors have used ETFs to hedge bond portfolios, but they are more expensive than futures contracts, which typically require a margin of just 5% to 15% to access the full value of a contract.

— Check out 280 CapMarkets' Bond Buying Platform Pulls Advisors Across 'Last Mile' on ThinkAdvisor.