Category: News

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

Hume Brophy

[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

HERZLIYA, Israel, May 31, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — BondIT today announced that leading fixed income house, FIIG Securities, has signed an agreement to use its bond portfolio solution for relationship managers.

BondIT is a bond portfolio solution provider that empowers investment managers and advisors to create and optimise bespoke fixed income portfolios with sophisticated, yet easy-to-use tools powered by proprietary machine learning algorithms.

FIIG Securities is Australia’s leading fixed income house with over AUD 10 billion under investment. With offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Malta, FIIG’s team of over 140 employees provides service and support to over 6,000 clients across Australia.

To support the company’s substantial growth in the fixed income market, FIIG Securities will adopt BondIT across all front office users to bring efficiency to daily activities including new portfolio construction, investment idea generation, relative value analysis, portfolio monitoring and portfolio optimisation. BondIT will integrate with FIIG Securities’ core investment management platform, SimCorp Dimension, providing users with seamless access to all the information needed to provide an enhanced service to FIIG Securities’ growing client base.

Etai Ravid, CEO and founder, BondIT, comments: “Over the past year we’ve built a great working relationship with FIIG and are delighted with their decision to deploy our leading fixed income technology platform to support the growth of their business. FIIG recognises how new technologies are reshaping the investment industry, enabling businesses to scale and ultimately enhancing customer service. We are excited to partner with the team at FIIG to help them realise their growth ambitions.”

John Prickett, Chief Operating Officer, FIIG Securities added: “Demand for fixed income, and in particular corporate bonds, is on the rise with more and more investors realising the benefits of corporate bonds as part of a diversified portfolio. The BondIT software will further enhance our offering, pairing the knowledge of our expert team with the latest technology to identify more fixed income opportunities for our clients and help them maximise their investments.”

About FIIG Securities

FIIG Securities Limited, which is licensed by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC), is Australia’slargest specialist fixed-income house.

FIIG has more than $10 billion in assets under advice in its short-term money market, bonds and custody business.  The company has Offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane Perth and Malta. For more information about FIIG Securities please visit Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.

About BondIT

BondIT, headquartered in Herzliya, Israel, enables advisors and investment professionals to significantly boost their productivity and trade flows by automating the construction, monitoring, and management of optimised fixed income portfolios. BondIT provides sophisticated, yet easy-to-use, tools backed by proprietary machine learning algorithms, helping customers scale their business, increase productivity, and meet their regulatory and compliance requirements.

In a case study with IBM, Dr. Hillel Raz and Dr. Eyal Kenig of BondIT described how technology is deployed to creates bespoke smart fixed-income portfolios in minutes to deliver greater value to investors.

“Our solution enables users to construct portfolios that are much more personalized to customers’ specific requirements, empowering them to invest more successfully. At the same time, the solution significantly cuts the time taken to create portfolios. Customers no longer have to wait weeks for investment recommendations—they can sit down with advisors for an hour and run through several portfolio options then and there.” — Dr. Eyal Kenig

Read the case study https://www.ibm.com/case-studies/bondit

Donald Chan, Head of Asia from BondIT, spoke about BondIT’s latest technology application with on the panel discussion at Asian Financial Forum 2018.

Ultra-low interest rates, quantitative easing, and loose monetary policy – a collective global financial comfort blanket that has been soothing us for the best part of a decade. Well, nothing lasts forever, and as we see a change in the stance of major developed-world central banks and the expected tapering of their bond-buying operations, we inevitably begin to question what will happen to the patterns of performance and correlations between bond sectors.

So what happens now?

In an environment where monetary policy tightening, it usually pays to shorten duration, reducing the sensitivity of fixed income portfolios to changes in interest rates that are felt most keenly by longer-dated instruments.

Of course, it is equally important for investors to know what level of risk they are willing to tolerate and to consider their aversion to losses, as falling bond markets are likely as interest rates rise. As we speak, bond markets, like equities, appear stretched in terms of valuation, having endured a multi-year bull market.

With the long bull market in bonds at risk, investors and their advisers should be proactive in at least considering their options. Is there something that can help them model a portfolio fit to prosper in the changing environment?

Federal Funds Rate Options Implied Forecast and Federal Reserve’s Target Fed Funds Rate Forecast per Dot Plot

Source: Bloomberg, Federal Reserve and J.P. Morgan.

Note: Fed Funds options implied forecast as of 12/13/2017. Fed dot plot as of 12/13/2017 FOMC Statement.

Opportunity set (and match) in fixed income

From a global perspective, the six months to end June 2017 saw net new inflows to bond funds of US$440.6 billion compared with equities, which attracted US$207.2 billion [1]. These numbers underline the fact that many investors continue to see bonds as a fundamental element of a balanced portfolio, providing some ballast to their more volatile and risky equity cousins.

Partly for this reason, investors or their advisers may be tempted to see fixed income as a homogeneous group. While there is undoubted correlation running through the different sectors of the fixed income market, the reality is that it is comprised of separate parts that react and perform in distinctive ways – indeed they should be expected to play different roles within a portfolio. What relatively stable government bonds bring to the game is very different to that of an emerging market or high yield bond allocation, which can be expected to provide more alpha but be a more unpredictable ride.

This is a conundrum. It is easy enough to make allocations to different sectors within the bond universe; where investors and their advisers are less proficient is in picking the right combination of mutual funds and ETFs to reflect changing market conditions.

The result is often a diversified but relatively dysfunctional portfolio that does not necessarily chime with the end-investors’ objectives. Where specific bets might effectively cancel each other out and where risk (interest rate or credit risk) may be at more extreme levels than realised.

[1] Global Fund Market Statistics Report For June 2017 – Lipper Analysis

Don’t just react, interact

What, therefore, is the optimal combination of the varied sectors and parts of the fixed income market as interest rates rise? How does one go about constructing such a portfolio?

One of the critical difficulties for a bond investor is the fragmentation and huge amount of data facing them, as well as the plethora of instruments in the bond market. Added to that is the inefficiency and, on occasion, illiquidity of various parts of the market.

The danger is that client portfolios are doomed to become sub-optimal or, in other words, suffer from misallocation of capital or the inevitable drift that occurs in portfolios over time, whereby the objectives of the investor and the expected performance of the underlying assets gradually diverges. The simple reason for this is that markets do not stand still. What was the appropriate combination of holdings last month may not be entirely right next month, or even next week. It is cumbersome and time consuming to continually reassess and tweak holdings to realign the portfolio with one’s objectives. What to do?

Artificial intelligence and data science have evolved hugely over the past few years so that they can readily provide solutions across many industries, not least investment management.

Regarding speed, there are algorithmic solutions available that can efficiently do in seconds what an investor might spend many hours to achieve. The crucial element is the swift sifting and analysis of all relevant data in an all-seeing, dispassionate manner by the software. It is a practical shortcut to a customised, optimal portfolio, slicing through the noise and, all too often, opaque nature of bond markets.

Turning to objectivity, and a technology-based approach eradicates the mistakes and subjective biases of the human mind. Where an individual may have preferences, the machine has none. It constructs the portfolio based purely on impartial observations. It is through such technology that investors can take back control, avoiding the drift towards dysfunctional bond portfolios.

At BondIT, our team has developed an approach that offers bond portfolio optimisation based on an objective analysis of millions of data as well as observations of market behaviour. New data is continuously updated, so our system learns and evolves in real time, reassuring both investors and their advisors.

What’s more, we have the added benefit of detailed, real-time, user-friendly analytics, which can be hugely useful for advisers when discussing portfolios with their clients. It provides a boost to productivity and client experience.

Be prepared

Customisation is an essential element, with tailored portfolios being generated off a single platform. Such a tool allows for existing portfolios to be uploaded and adjusted in seconds and new ones created. BondIT aggregates market data and client input and applies machine learning predictive algorithms to compare bonds, selecting those with predicted best performance for inclusion in the customised portfolios.

In an investment world where positive risk-adjusted return and performance is paramount and where efficient, relatively low-cost solutions are in demand, such technology-focused solutions are not just a response to today’s challenges but also pre-empt the environment we face in the years to come. For bonds, the income may be predetermined, but the future isn’t – it makes sense to be prepared.

Written By

Adrian Gostick
Chief Revenue Officer of BondIT

During the Fintech session at The Asset 12th Asian Bond Market Summit, the panel of speakers discussed how technology is rejuvenating the market with applications ranging from bond syndication to execution. BondIT’s Duncan Klein spoke about how our portfolio optimisation and idea generation engine clutched the pre-trade workflow. Find out more in the full article by Janette Chen of The Asset

Fintech accretive, not disruptive

By Janette Chen

SINGAPORE – Fintech in Asia is more “accretive than disruptive”, according to a panel of experts at The Asset 12th Asian Bond Market Summit held at the Conrad in Singapore. However, in terms of market penetration, Asia lags behind the US and Europe.

The public tends to think of fintech as a disruptor. “Fintech companies are not disruptive, we’re accretive,” says Paul Durrant, managing partner at Conduit Securities. “We’re bringing solutions to jumpstart many years of inefficiency of investing,” says Duncan Klein, head of outbound product management at BondIT.

With the fintech startups emerging in Asia, traditional financial institutions are starting to innovate, either by collaborating with fintech companies or bringing forth new ideas themselves. “The early adopters of e-trading in Asia are private banks,” says Klein. “Aspiration for fintech is not just within the private banks. This is what the end client is asking for,” he adds.

“Independent financial advisors are starting to see how we can build new technology in the current ecosystem,” says Klein. “Latest adopters are asset managers. They are adopting the execution desk style,” he adds, labeling the private asset management companies as the “non-adopters”.

Twenty years ago, equities trading was on the floor of the exchange and it is now electronic, says Rahul Banerjee, founder of Bondevalue. The significant changes in the landscape in this sector happened during the past few years.

“Electronic bond trading is pretty well adopted globally. Asia has been embracing it in the last five to seven years,” says Klein.

Singapore is seen as a hub for fintech. Their government has been targeting fintech as their core development strategy, providing a supportive environment. In October this year, the Monetary Authority of Singapore launched a transformation map for the country’s financial industry, highlighting continuous innovation and technology adaption.

However, compared to the West, Asia falls behind regarding market penetration. “The markets in the US and Europe are much bigger than Asia for fintechs,” says EK Ong, CEO and co-founder at Bondlinc. There is up to 50% non-bank financing in US; in Asia, the figure is only 5%, according to Durrant.

From a positive perspective, this indicates huge market potential in Asia. As for banks, a good first step for getting involved with fintech is use open APIs, Ong suggests. Looking at what Singapore has achieved during the past few years, the general outlook for fintech in Asian bond market is positive, says Banerjee. In addition, the rising second and third generation of wealthy individuals in Asia are already turning to fintech for investment solutions, says Durrant.

 

Fosun’s Partnership will Bring AI to China’s Fixed Income Market and Accelerate BondIT’s Global Growth

October 27, 2017 <<Shanghai, China and Herzliya, Israel>> Fosun Group (“Fosun” or the “Group”) announced today a strategic investment of US$14.25 million into Israeli FinTech company, BondIT. This marks the Groups’ first Fintech investment in the State of Israel. Upon completion of the transaction, Fosun is now a major shareholder of BondIT including representation on its Board of Directors.

Headquartered in Herzliya, Israel, BondIT provides an intelligent solution to fixed income traders and their portfolios. BondIT’s leading technological capabilities and global market network empowers investment managers to create and optimise bond portfolios with sophisticated yet easy-to-use automation tools powered by proprietary machine learning algorithms.

BondIT’s unique breakthrough lies in its ability to leverage data science and AI learning to overcome the complexity and inefficiencies often experienced in fixed income products. Its intelligence enables investors to quantitatively optimise the risks and returns of their fixed income portfolios. This makes BondIT’s solution for fixed income strategies a highly attractive proposition, not just in China but across key global bond markets.

Guo Guangchang, Chairman of Fosun said, “Innovation is key to development, and crucial to the future of humanity. As such, we are embracing the opportunities arising from the latest technological breakthroughs in AI and Industrial 4.0. We believe BondIT compliments the Group’s own financial ecosystem and as well as playing an important role in the upgrading of wealth management institutions with its disruptive technology. This investment also marks a continuation of our investment into the Israeli market, a market the Group remains optimistic on.”

Etai Ravid, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of BondIT said, “The long-term vision of BondIT is to bring significant efficiency to the global bond markets through the application of artificial intelligence and data science, and help our customers gain a competitive advantage through increased productivity and better client centricity. We are excited to be included in the Fosun network of innovative companies and for the opportunity to increasingly use our unique technology to benefit investors. And with Fosun members sitting on the board as part of the deal, we believe they will bring their investment experience and China market expertise to the company.”

Adrian Gostick, Chief Revenue Officer of BondIT said: “Fosun’s investment and partnership will have a significant positive impact on our business, allowing  us to accelerate our global expansion plans especially in the U.S., the world’s largest fixed income market. And with China’s market being the world’s third largest, and still growing in size and sophistication, riding on Fosun’s global financial network, BondIT is committed to becoming a leader in the market to greatly improve the efficiency of the financial sector.”

About Fosun

Fosun International Limited is a family-focused multinational company that has been listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (00656:HK) since 2007. Founded in 1992, Fosun’s total assets exceed RMB500 billion (c.US$75 billion). With its roots in China, and through technology and innovation, Fosun’s mission is to create customer-to-maker (C2M) ecosystems in health, happiness and wealth, providing high-quality products and services for families around the world.

About BondIT

BondIT, headquartered in Herzliya, Israel, enables advisors and investment professionals to significantly boost their productivity and trade flows by automating the construction, monitoring, and management of optimised fixed income portfolios. BondIT provides sophisticated, yet easy-to-use, tools backed by proprietary machine learning algorithms, helping customers scale their business, increase productivity, and comply with fiduciary responsibilities.