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Fixed Income High Yield

Managing fixed income high yield bonds is faster and more efficient with bondIT. We have developed intuitive fixed income technology to work with your business to deliver efficient, compliant and cost-effective investment strategies which not only ensures that fixed income portfolio management takes less time and effort but also ensures that investor objectives are met and exceeded. 

What are Fixed Income High Yield Bonds?

Investing in high yield bonds is not so different from choosing regular corporate bonds to buy. Both types of bond are issued by a firm with a promise to pay the agreed interest rate and return the principal amount at the maturity of the bond. A fixed income high yield bond, also referred to as a junk bond, pays higher interest rates proportionate to the level of risk investors incur when they purchase them. These types of fixed income bonds may be opportunities in the corporate bonds market with a lower credit rating than investment-grade bonds. They are usually more likely to default so they must pay a higher yield to compensate investors willing to take the credit risk they pose. A high yield corporate bond may come from startup companies or capital-intensive firms with a higher debt ratio. A ‘fallen angel’ is an investment-grade corporate bond which has been reduced to a junk bond status owing to the issuer’s change in credit status while ‘rising stars’ are bonds with an increased rating, influenced by the issuing company’s credit quality improvement.

Investing in the fixed income high yield bond market can be very lucrative but this is dependent upon the efficient and effective management of the inherent risks. bondIT offers investment portfolio managers a complete asset management system which seamlessly integrates with any enterprise system. You can choose our standard powerful data management features or develop custom fixed income analytics built with our team to ensure client-specific analysis. 

How to Reduce the Risk of Investing in Fixed Income High Yield?

One of the biggest disadvantages for fixed income high yield investors is the risk of default. A diversified portfolio is the standard strategy for limiting the risk to an investor’s total return, but this can limit strategies and increase fees for investors. When investors buy fixed income assets issued by individual companies or governments, they can build bond ladders to reduce interest rate risk and avoid fees. However, the individual bonds market is often considered too risky in the high yield bond market. 

bondIT delivers new advanced laddering capabilities delivered by our intuitive user interface. When building a fully diversified broad-market portfolio including government bonds, municipal bonds and corporate bonds, bondIT aligns portfolio optimization with client-specific needs, reflecting trends in today’s planning-centric wealth management space. Use the bondIT asset management tools to custom-immunize pre-retirement liabilities including new home deposits or down payments for vacation property, as well as children and grandchildren’s college tuition, ensuring that financial advisors and client managers can prioritize client objectives and meet their investment expectations. Once clients reach post-retirement stages and asset accumulation shifts to decumulation, advisors can efficiently manage income distribution for the duration of retirement using bondIT’s income ladder tool. It has been specifically designed to remain flexible and generate bond ladders and income streams to rate bonds, meet clients’ needs and align with their requirements. bondIT also offers portfolio managers the option of a ‘Solve Anyway’ feature, developing investment proposals and strategies even when constraints seem infeasible. 

Volatility of Fixed Income High Yield Bond Market

The fixed income high yield bond market is much more volatile than the investment-grade bond market with high yield bonds as an asset class reporting some of the biggest losses in value throughout 2008.  Generally speaking, the volatility of the fixed income high yield bonds is closer to the stock market than it is the investment-grade bond market. Small investors are generally advised not to buy individual high yielding bonds due to the risk of default with high yield fixed income ETFs and mutual funds usually considered less risky choices for investors. 

Intelligent Fixed Income Risk Management Solutions

bondIT delivers a range of powerful fixed income investment options and analyses of fixed income funds through an easy to understand and intuitive user interface. Review intelligent fixed income risk management solutions drawn directly from real-time data inputs, with the capability to drill down into any data point. Our platform enables portfolio managers to deliver better, more efficient outcomes for their clients by optimizing internal workflows and delivering a single point from which relevant and actionable proposals can be seamlessly generated, reviewed and implemented. We help you react faster and put in place bond market responses that generate less risky investment opportunities for fixed income securities and smart rebalancing fixed income options. 

From the dashboard, you can review and examine investment exposures and bond allocation across the entirety of your portfolios or only a subset of them. Drill into individual characteristics to identify the underlying source exposure and then use our smart algorithms to generate suggested fixed income trades. Compare bondIT’s analysis with your ideas to develop the best strategy for reallocating exposures in fixed income bonds. A proposal can be generated in a matter of minutes using bondIT, rather than potentially hours of trawling through possibilities and analysing potential scenarios for increasing yield of corporate bonds. 

bondIT is designed to support portfolio managers doing what they do best – remaining on top of emerging fixed income high yield developments and delivering client needs by optimizing bond funds. Contact us today to discuss what bondIT can provide for your business. 

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Fixed Income Bonds

bondIT’s technology has been designed for optimizing fixed income bonds and fixed income portfolio management. bondIT’s Frontier is an intuitive and powerful asset management software solution that takes the guesswork out of managing fixed income funds for portfolio managers and advisors. BondIT has been developed using the latest data science and software development methodologies to produce a user-friendly interface through which advisors and managers can dramatically increase their efficiency and not only meet the investment goals of their clients but exceed them too. 

How do Fixed Income Bonds Work?

Fixed income investments come in a variety of forms from individual bonds to mutual bond funds and fixed income ETFs. It is the role of investment portfolio managers and advisors to manage bond market opportunities for their investors and BondIT assists by developing instant investment proposals and rebalancing options driven by the needs of the client. Easily identify investment grade and non-investment grade bonds, navigate the secondary market and mitigate investment objectives risks with in-depth analyses delivered by bondIT. Our credit analytics technology does your analysis for you, freeing up teams to focus on responding to market trends and producing instantly compliant proposals for client review. 

What are Fixed Income Bonds?

Fixed income bonds are a type of investment which comes in the form of either corporate bonds or municipal bonds. A fixed income asset is essentially a debt instrument offered by either a government organization or a corporate entity seeking capital investment. In return for purchasing fixed income securities, the government organization or corporate entity promises to return the capital investment about at the bond’s maturity as well as make regular interest payments (known as coupon payments) throughout the life of the bond. This makes fixed income instruments attractive investment opportunities for investors seeking regular income and low fixed income risk investment opportunities.

Government or Municipal Bonds

Not all fixed income bonds are equal, however. Government or municipal bonds are considered the lowest risk with treasury bonds even offering tax offsets for investors. Because these types of investments are relatively low risk, they don’t offer very high returns for investors. Government bonds are unlikely to destabilize before the maturity date and the risk of default on the bond is very low. Investors are still subject to interest rate risk, however. When an investor purchases a bond, they do so at a particular interest rate driven by market factors. This interest rate guarantees the income generated for the investor and projects a total return on the bond. Should interest rates lower over the term of the bond then the bond issuer may seek to borrow at the new lower interest rate. They may call the bond early, returning the capital investment an investor has made and effectively eliminating any further income generated by that bond. They may issue new bonds at a new, lower interest rate, significantly lowering the total yield of the bond for the investor. 

Even given this inherent risk with municipal bonds, investment portfolio managers are still likely to include these types of bonds in a diverse portfolio to help maintain wealth generation as steadily and as low risk as possible.

Corporate Bonds

To balance out the low risk and low return municipal bonds, a diverse portfolio may include a selection of corporate bonds to buy. The yield of corporate bonds is generally a lot higher than government-issued bonds due to the higher credit risk a corporate bond poses over government-backed fixed income bonds. Not all fixed income bonds available to purchase on the corporate bonds market are high risk, of course, but junk bonds or non-investment grade bonds are amongst the highest risk and the highest return opportunities. These types of bonds are issued by corporate entities such as start-ups or overcapitalized firms seeking cash flow for their business. The credit risk is usually very high on these types of bonds, driven by credit ratings issued by independent credit rating agencies. The risk of default is typically very high with sometimes only a portion of the bond returned once the issue liquidates its assets and distributes the proceeds among its creditors. 

Portfolio Diversification

To maintain diversification, portfolio managers and advisors will seek to diversify investment opportunities to include fixed income high yield bonds as well as lower yield, less risky investments. To manage bond allocation, they’ll use a range of fixed income analytics to determine the smartest way to invest on behalf of their clients. This process typically takes hours of analysis to achieve with investment proposals then painstakingly developed for client review. BondIT changes all of that. You can choose to use the standard range of analytics included within our asset management program or you can work closely with our team to develop client-specific and business-specific analytics driven by the objectives that you’re looking for. 

BondIT is completely data agnostic, capable of integrating with any enterprise system instantly. It has been developed to work within your workflows and increase speed and efficiency by generating compliant investment proposals in a fraction of the time it typically takes teams to complete in-depth analysis using whatever internal programs and asset management tools they have created. Generally, these tools are offline and unable to integrate directly with compliance workflows and other systems, increasing the time it takes to develop proposals for fixed income options, get them reviewed and implemented. 

To find out how BondIT can increase your team’s fixed income trade efficiency, generate wealth for your clients and generate instant portfolio optimization, speak with one of our team today. 

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News

Credit downgrade probability in Household Goods sector increases by 13%, while Airlines sector retains greatest risk of downgrades overall

  • bondIT’s Scorable Credit Upgrade & Downgrade Forecast indicates that aggregated downgrade risk has increased the most in the Household Goods Sector, moving from 16% to 29% over the past quarter.
  • At 31%, the downgrade probability of corporate debt is greater in the Airlines sector than in any other industry
  • The change in upgrade probability of corporate debt is either negative or neutral for 12 of the 14 sectors analysed; however, the upgrade potential in the Energy and Hotels, Resorts and Casinos sector has increased by 2% and 1% respectively
  • bondIT’s predictive credit analytics, powered by machine learning and explainable-AI, analyses more than 250 data variables daily including solvency ratios, capital requirements, profitability, and efficiency ratios

London/Berlin/Israel, 1 November 2022 – The latest Scorable Credit Upgrade & Downgrade forecast from bondIT, a provider of credit analytics and next-gen fixed income technology, indicates that the probability of achieving a negative change to a credit rating has increased most within the Households Goods sector in the third quarter of 2022. The downgrade potential has increased by 13%, from 16% in Q2 to 29% in Q3.

Following Household Goods, Household Products – which includes hygiene, personal, beauty, home care, health, and nutrition brands – saw the second highest increase of aggregated downgrade risk to credit over in the past quarter. The downgrade probability of the sector’s corporate debt rose by 6%.

Aggregated risk has increased in the Airlines industry, by 2% quarter-on-quarter and by 5% since the start of 2022. The strength of the dollar has renewed pressure on the airline industry’s balance sheets, driving up costs, from fuel to the aircrafts themselves. With the downgrade potential now at 31%, it is the industry most at risk of being downgraded, followed by Travel & Tourism and Household Products at 30%.

David Curtis, Partner at bondIT, said: “Anticipating changes in credit risk and understanding market dynamics early is crucial in this volatile market environment. There is a real opportunity for bond investors now to take advantage of higher yields, but we also see a lot of risk in the market. High-quality data is paramount to understanding credit risk and to achieve optimal bond allocation. The challenge faced by many fixed income investors, in the face of increasing margin pressure and resource constraints, is how to translate huge amounts of raw data into useful intelligence. This is where AI offers real added value. In a competitive landscape, better data drives better performance and that’s where bondIT is able to really harness technology to create a lasting competitive advantage, improve productivity and efficiency for our clients.”

Against a challenging economic backdrop of rising interest rates, reduced consumer spending and high inflation, the Technology sector also faces headwinds. The downgrade probability is now 15%, an increase of 2% over the past quarter, and 4% since the start of the year. The downgrade probabilities in the Automotive and Biopharma industries have also increased by 3% and 2% respectively.

Aggregated risk in the Energy sector has, in comparison, reduced quarter-on-quarter in line with rising profits. After a -2% decline in upgrade potential between Q1 and Q2, there has been a 2% reversal in Q3. The upgrade probability for corporate bonds is now 23%.

bondIT’s credit analytics platform, Scorable, harnesses machine learning and explainable-AI to predict downgrade and upgrade probability of more than 3,000 rated corporate and financial issuers worldwide within a 12-month timeframe. The Rating Transition Model analyses more than 250 data variables daily including solvency ratios, capital requirements, profitability, and efficiency ratios. The platform provides actionable insights for investors, allowing them to monitor corporate bond ratings and spreads, and anticipate rating changes and investment opportunities, ahead of the market.

About bondIT

bondIT provides next generation front office investment technology. We combine Data Science, Explainable-AI (XAI) and Advanced Technologies with Fixed Income investment know-how to improve the performance, accuracy and efficiency of our clients’ investment processes and businesses. Our technology enables clients to efficiently build, analyze and rebalance investment portfolios, and achieve within minutes what previously took hours or days. Thanks to bondIT’s predictive credit analytics, investors can anticipate changes in corporate credit risk and capitalise on investment opportunities ahead of the market. The platform is highly flexible, being data agnostic and API or cloud based, and allows for the seamless onboarding of internal models as well as downstream connectivity to existing portfolio management and trading systems. bondIT adheres to the highest privacy and security standards and is SOC 2 certified by Ernst & Young. bondIT is privately owned and paving the way for financial institutions of all sizes to integrate the power of greater technology in their investment processes. For more information, please visit www.bonditglobal.com.