Category: News

BondIT, an independent provider of fixed income technology, has been selected to take part in BNY Mellon’s Accelerator Program. The program works with innovative technology companies to create cutting-edge solutions that support BNY Mellon’s clients and the global financial industry.

 

During the six-month project, BondIT will collaborate with professionals across BNY Mellon to create next-generation technology for advisory businesses, helping them to automate crucial parts of the investment process and to mass customize their services.

 

“We look forward to working with BNY Mellon to develop new digital solutions for their clients. Being selected to this Accelerator is a testament to the relevance of our technology for the financial advisor community” said Etai Ravid, CEO of BondIT Global. “Smart technologies are more important than ever to help advisors provide customized products and superior client engagement, while increasing efficiency and scale.”

 

“BNY Mellon’s Accelerator Program seeks out the best and brightest technology companies to build the most innovative solutions,” said Adam Levine, Co-Head of Digital Partnerships and Co-Founder of BNY Mellon’s Accelerator Program. “We are delighted to have BondIT on board and to collaborate with them to create world-class technology for our clients and our communities.”

 

BondIT has developed a unique platform to automate and optimize fixed-income portfolio construction, management and research. With BondIT’s scalable technology, financial advisors can generate dynamic portfolio proposals in real time, swiftly optimize portfolios and provide clients with detailed analytics and reporting. The platform leverages explainable AI across the entire portfolio lifecycle, empowering users to anticipate changes in credit risk and spot investment opportunities ahead of the market.

 

As part of the accelerator project, BondIT will further refine its technology and add new features, including live pricing and liquidity data, to its platform.

 

About BondIT

BondIT Global provides next-generation fixed income technology. Our scalable technology platform leverages machine learning and data science techniques, empowering portfolio managers and financial advisors to automate and optimize their fixed income portfolio construction, management and research processes. Thanks to the integration of Scorable’s credit research platform in 2020, investors can anticipate changes in corporate credit risk and spot investment opportunities ahead of the market. The platform allows for the seamless onboarding of internal models as well as downstream connectivity to existing portfolio management and trading systems. BondIT is privately owned and data-agnostic, paving the way for financial institutions of all sizes to integrate via APIs and power their investment technologies. For more information, please visit www.bonditglobal.com.

Herzliya/Berlin, 11 February 2021 — bondIT, an independent portfolio construction technology provider for fixed income, and Scorable, a provider of AI-driven credit analysis, have announced the closure of their merger deal. Through the deal, the newly merged company will operate under the name bondIT Global with a 50-strong team based across offices in Tel Aviv, Berlin, New York and Brisbane, Australia.

bondIT Global combines portfolio construction technology and AI-driven credit analysis to offer a fully integrated portfolio management and research as a service solution. The technology enables fixed income asset managers and financial advisors to automate and optimize the investment process, allowing users to build and analyze portfolios within minutes rather than hours or days.

The merger will enhance bondIT Global’s geographic reach and customer base, putting the combined company in an optimal position to target the $80 trillion global asset management market. The total investment in bondIT Global amounts to more than $40 million.

By Bob Guzman, Oliver Kroll & Dan Taylor

2020 was a challenging year for the asset management industry. The outbreak of Covid-19 intensified existing headwinds, which included increased competition, fee compression and rising client expectations. As the year drew to a close, news about the impending roll-out of vaccines fueled optimism across global markets. However, with Covid-19 cases still on the rise, timing of full vaccine deployment and further fiscal stimulus unknown, a challenging market environment is likely to prevail at least for the first half of 2021.

For asset managers, the impact of the pandemic accelerated the need to transform business models and processes to deal with the demanding environment. Despite Covid-19 presenting an opportunity for active managers to demonstrate their ability to navigate extreme volatility better than their passive peers, research demonstrates that only one third of active fixed income funds outperformed their benchmarks during the critical first six months of 2020.

Passive investing continues to gain ground as more and more investors choose the certainty of market returns at very low cost over the uncertainty and volatility of active returns at higher fees. The growing popularity of passive & systematic strategies continues to pressure fees for active management, aggravated further by a persistent low yield environment. But active managers are holding their ground by taking steps to boost their competitiveness in the market – investing in new skills, new technologies and new product strategies. Today’s informed customers expect demonstrable value for money delivered through innovative products and solutions.

In 2021, we expect a continuation of this trend as successful asset managers expand their efforts to pursue scale and differentiation. Many firms are attempting to achieve scale and leverage their cost base by merging with, or acquiring, competitors. Last year saw several high-profile deals across the industry, and this consolidation is likely to accelerate in 2021. However, we also expect an increased push for organic growth as many asset managers attempt to optimize performance and efficiency by applying technology to processes that enhance their human productivity in both portfolio management and research.

To stay competitive, intelligent automation is necessary and can be achieved through advanced technology and AI, providing a solution that enables automization and optimization of investment processes. With the right tools, large amounts of data can also be transformed into useful intelligence and allow asset managers to quickly adapt to a changing industry.

Going forward, the merging of data and digitization of firms’ human intellectual property will play a key role in not only helping asset managers accomplish their scale goals, but also improving efficiency and the ability to meet client objectives. By using smart technologies, asset managers can optimize critical parts of the investment process and systematize their strategies, which subsequently enables the creation of tailored investment solutions more aligned with specific client requirements.

Technology will not replace the asset manager anytime soon, but it is already changing the industry in ways that are differentiating early adopters of innovative technology from its skeptics. It is our firm view that the gap between the pioneers and the laggards will continue to widen, and the latter will most likely struggle to remain competitive in 2021 and beyond.

Herzliya, Israel & Berlin, Germany, 19 November 2020 – BondIT, an independent portfolio construction technology provider for fixed income, and Scorable, a provider of AI-driven credit analysis, announced today the signing of a definitive merger agreement pursuant to which the companies will combine their technologies in order to transform fixed-income investing. The transaction is expected to close by the end of 2020.

Bringing together cutting-edge technology and advanced AI, the combined company will offer a fully integrated portfolio management and research as a service solution, enabling fixed income asset managers and financial advisors to automate and optimize the investment process. The solution empowers users to build and analyze portfolios within minutes rather than hours or days.

Additionally, BondIT’s and Scorable’s uniquely scalable solution allows asset managers to rebalance existing portfolios and define and manage universes, including approved or restricted issuer lists. Users can simply specify their individual portfolio objectives and bond level constraints and get results in real-time, improving productivity and efficiency for asset managers while helping scale revenues. Further, the new solution seamlessly integrates with asset managers’ internal models and connects with existing order management and execution systems.

“Fixed income investors still rely heavily on manual-driven procedures, but in light of market and cost pressures, intelligent automation is increasingly necessary to stay competitive. Merging our technologies allows us to even better serve the evolving digital needs of our clients by helping them optimize their portfolio and risk management to boost efficiency, performance and scale,” said Etai Ravid, CEO of BondIT. “This merger further supports BondIT’s goal of creating a one-stop platform for Explainable Portfolio Construction, to allow users to easily understand the rationale behind the investment selection by making idea generation transparent and intuitive.”

Philippe Padrock, Managing Director of Scorable, said, “Most portfolio managers have access to a large amount of data, but they struggle to turn it into a competitive advantage. It needs the right tools to transform data into useful intelligence. Implementing technology to centralize information and data is imperative, and Scorable’s explainable AI does exactly that by turning vast amounts of data into relevant insights and translating these into appropriate actions based on the portfolio objectives – all in a fraction of time that the manual process would take.”

Scorable’s predictive credit and relative value analysis combines and contextualizes more than 400 quantitative and qualitative data variables to help asset managers create optimal portfolios and better manage evolving risks. The company leverages explainable AI across the whole portfolio lifecycle to identify and predict changes in credit risk as well as spot investment opportunities ahead of the market.

Combining BondIT’s established footprint in the US and APAC with Scorable’s presence in Europe will significantly boost the combined company’s international reach, building on existing market knowledge, infrastructure and relationships to target the $80 trillion global asset management market. BondIT and Scorable are backed by investors and partners across the globe, with total investment in the combined company amounting to more than $40 million. Talanx AG, a supporter of Scorable since day one, will continue to be a major investor through its subsidiary Ampega Asset Management GmbH.

Harry Ploemacher, CEO of Ampega Asset Management, also commented on the merger, “Asset managers need to get digitization right if they want to stay competitive. Smart technologies are more important than ever to successfully navigate challenging markets. By combining their expertise, BondIT and Scorable have created a streamlined and efficient technology solution that meets the needs of fixed-income managers and helps them adapt to a changing industry. We’ve been successfully using Scorable’s technology since its market launch and we look forward to supporting the new company as it enters its next phase of development.”

About BondIT

BondIT is an independent portfolio construction technology provider for fixed income. Empowering today’s portfolio manager and financial advisor, BondIT’s scalable technology platform leverages machine learning and data science techniques to provide optimized portfolios and analysis without sacrificing flexibility. The platform allows for the seamless onboarding of internal models as well as downstream connectivity to existing portfolio management and trading systems. Further, BondIT is privately owned and data-agnostic, paving the way for financial institutions of all sizes to integrate via APIs and power their investment technologies. For more information, please visit www.bonditglobal.com.

About Scorable

Scorable, a Berlin based company, has developed an AI-driven solution for the automated credit risk analysis of bonds. Scorable’s AI uses multiple data sources such as financial news, business figures, market prices and credit ratings to evaluate their influence on a company’s financial standing. Scorable’s service is currently being targeted at asset managers and corporate investors across Europe and the US. The company is supported by Talanx as an investor and Deloitte as a company builder. For more information, please visit www.scorable.com.

Listen to Andrew Merrill talk through our new laddering and lifetime income functionality that can dynamically optimize bond portfolios. Book a demo with us today to learn more!

Watch the Demo Advanced Laddering

Advanced Laddering

 

COVID-19’s nationwide lockdowns have forced countless portfolio managers and financial advisors to work remotely – many for the first time – stretching the limits of fintech into a new, remote light. Portfolio managers’ portfolio construction and optimization technology are primarily from legacy providers that lack the agility to adapt to this new working environment.

At the same time, financial advisors face a period of heightening client communications that require an ability to display proposed fixed income portfolios to clients virtually. To support these portfolio managers and financial advisors during this turbulent time, the fintech is offering free consultations and trial period of its scalable portfolio construction platform. Bond IT is an independent portfolio construction technology provider for fixed income.

With BondIT, users remote-working can:

• assign and share investment portfolios across their businesses in any geography, enabling them to collaborate on ideas together and to re-route work, based on resource availability
• use intelligent algorithms to automate a manager’s process to rebalance or optimize portfolios, based on market changes, without the need for manual user inputs
• configure the BondIT system to run or adjust portfolios automatically based on manager-defined events or at set times throughout the day, creating an automated workflow that can review and optimize portfolios in step with the needs of managers and investors alike
• produce controlled client proposals and reports

Cybersecurity

Adrian Dixon head of Markets at Bond IT, added that the BondIT platform is deployed using a multi-tier architecture and makes use of a range of defense mechanisms in response to ever increasing range of cyber security threats.

The BondIT platform is a SaaS solution deployed within Amazon Web Services (AWS) underpinned by the secured AWS Relational Database System (RDS) with access control, Network Isolation and Firewalls. In addition there we have logical separation of the Database tier through the implementation of a trust-based micro-services architecture with separation of Portfolio and Client Data through unique instances of RDS.

Access to Portfolio and Client data is protected through the use of JSON Web Tokens which are issued via a separate Identity Access Management (IAM) component. Strict Access Control Lists (ACL’s) are defined and implemented across each of the Firewalls with backend components further governed and controlled for access via the use of AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

Finally, data transport and communication between layers is encrypted with all external data transfers required to use the HTTPS protocol.

BondIT offers optimization/automation freebie for portfolio managers working from home

NEW YORK, NY – MARCH 2, 2020 – BondIT, an independent portfolio construction technology provider for fixed income, today announced that Bob Guzman and Dan Taylor have joined as Head of Asset Management and Head of Client Solutions, respectively. They will join Andrew Merrill, Head of North America, in the New York office, and will report to Etai Ravid, CEO, in these newly created roles.

Since its product launch in 2018, BondIT has grown to support leading fixed income asset managers, with 35 employees worldwide. BondIT’s scalable portfolio construction platform is delivered via off-the-shelf web applications, API, and professional services. The platform fulfills the demands of portfolio managers (PMs) at large institutions for intuitive and efficient portfolio construction and analysis technology that mirrors the PM workflow, as well as the financial advisor’s demand for fixed income portfolio proposal generation that both simplifies and elevates advisor/client engagement around fixed income.

Bob Guzman joins BondIT from Blackrock, where he was Global Head of Risk Governance and Performance Oversight for the Client Solutions group. Before Blackrock, Guzman served as Global Head of Pension Risk Management at UBS Global Asset Management in New York and Chicago, and as Global Head of Liability-Driven Investing and Global Head of Derivatives at Aberdeen Asset Management in London (now Aberdeen Standard). In his new role as Head of Asset Management for BondIT, Guzman will oversee product strategy and development.

Dan Taylor joins from Aberdeen Standard Investments, where he was a longtime senior fixed income portfolio manager responsible for the structured credit sectors of institutional client portfolios. He later managed the team responsible for innovating product strategy and solutions across all public and private asset classes in the Americas.  As Head of Client Solutions for BondIT, Taylor will work with portfolio management and advisory clients to translate their workflow requirements into product design enhancements.

“We are delighted to welcome Bob and Dan to the BondIT team,” said Etai Ravid, CEO of BondIT. “We are in the disruption era, and industry leaders are taking note. Bob and Dan’s move from Blackrock and Aberdeen join our most recent hires Adrian Dixon, the former Chief Information Officer of FIIG Securities and BondIT’s current Head of Markets, as well as Andrew Merrill, BondIT’s Head of North America, who joined us from JP Morgan. The incredible talent that we are attracting to our team is a testament to our technology, the hard work of our employees, as well as the growing industry demand for new players in the fixed income portfolio technology sector that we are fulfilling.”

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ABOUT BONDIT

BondIT is an independent portfolio construction technology provider for fixed income. Empowering today’s portfolio manager and financial advisor, BondIT’s scalable technology platform leverages machine learning and data science techniques to provide optimized portfolios and analysis without sacrificing flexibility. The platform allows for the seamless onboarding of internal models as well as downstream connectivity to existing portfolio management and trading systems. Further, BondIT is privately owned and data-agnostic, paving the way for financial institutions of all sizes to integrate via API’s and power their investment technologies. For more information, please visit www.bonditglobal.com.

MEDIA CONTACT

Jacqueline Silva

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[email protected]

Adrian Dixon, Head of Markets at BondIT, talks to TRADE TV at this year’s Fixed Income Leaders Summit about how firms can drive efficiencies in fixed income through the application of data and artificial intelligence technologies.

Watch the interview

https://www.thetradenews.com/multimedia/bondit-driving-efficiencies-fixed-income-data-ai/

“It’s tough to build a modern successful business without good analytics, and prescriptive analytics is the linchpin that makes all the other models and analyses worth it… Machine learning models have enabled BondIT to custom tailor portfolios to each individual in minutes rather than days and have reduced risk by 30 percent while retaining similar earnings for clients.”

Read the article

BondIT participated in the largest wealth management event of the year – In|Vest 2019: Innovations in Investing, Saving & Advice. In their presentation, Dr. Hillel Raz and Andrew Merrill spoke about the fixed income market, its challenges, and how BondIT is helping solve these issues.

BondIT provides market-leading solutions that help fixed income investors in the construction, optimization and management of their portfolios. BondIT’s mission is to bring efficiency to global markets through the application of artificial intelligence and data science, leading to faster, smarter portfolio construction, improved customer service and enhanced revenue. The BondIT platform is meant for RIA’s, portfolio managers, financial advisers and asset managers.

Read more about BondIT

 

https://www.financial-planning.com/conference/invest-2019/demos/bondit?utm_content=InVest19&utm_medium=email&utm_source=confpromo&utm_campaign=In|Vest2019_a0719_Demo%20Results