What is fixed income portfolio optimization?

Fixed income portfolio optimization is the process of selecting and weighting bonds to hit a target yield, duration, credit-quality and exposure profile while respecting client constraints. Frontier does this against configurable optimization objectives and bond-level constraints, generating or rebalancing portfolios in minutes instead of manual screening in spreadsheets.

How does AI improve bond portfolio construction?

AI removes the manual steps between an objective and a finished portfolio. In Frontier, advisors describe objectives in plain language and Populate with AI maps them to portfolio construction fields; Search with AI turns a natural-language bond request into applied filters; Portfolio Summary with AI writes client-ready descriptions of yield, risk, duration and exposure.

What is a fixed income SMA, and how does bondIT manage them at scale?

A fixed income SMA is a bond portfolio owned directly by the client and managed to their individual objectives, constraints and tax position. Frontier manages them at scale through model management, batch rebalancing across similar accounts, custom bond ladders, direct indexing and tax-lot harvesting, so hundreds of personalized accounts are handled without proportional headcount.

How does tax-loss harvesting work in Frontier?

Frontier applies tax-lot and tax-loss harvesting with independent short-term and long-term controls, treating lots held 365 days or fewer separately from those held longer. Harvesting runs as part of portfolio construction and rebalancing rather than as a separate exercise, so tax outcomes are optimized alongside yield, duration and credit constraints.

What optimization methods does Frontier use?

Frontier supports compound constraints, mixed-integer solutions, non-convex objectives and a quadratic approach. That range matters because real fixed income mandates combine discrete choices, such as minimum lot sizes and issuer caps, with continuous targets like duration and yield, which simpler optimizers cannot solve together.

Can Frontier use our own data and ESG sources?

Yes. Frontier is data-agnostic and supports integration of a client's internal or proprietary data. Its technology utilises the widest range of ESG data offered by the market, and its flexible API infrastructure lets the platform integrate into existing processes and workflows rather than replacing them.

Frontier | Fixed Income Portfolio Management

Tailor-made investment portfolios for each and every client - at the click of a button

Frontier takes fixed income portfolio management to the next level by delivering data-driven, personalized, optimal portfolios. Generate or rebalance portfolios against different optimization objectives, with individually configurable portfolio objectives and bond-level constraints, across separately managed accounts and models, direct indexing mandates, custom bond ladders and tax-managed accounts.

As a cloud-hosted, API-ready platform, Frontier integrates with proprietary and external data, models, order management and execution systems. It improves the client experience through personalized tailor-made portfolios and on-demand reports. bondIT is SOC 2 certified, and more than 165 institutions worldwide run on the platform with over $1 trillion in client assets.

Fixed income portfolio optimization and generation happens in minutes rather than hours or days. Our algorithms feature powerful solve anyway functions that can handle compound constraints and mixed integer solutions to deliver the closest portfolio possible, in case not all constraints can be met simultaneously.

Frontier also offers multi-level, configurable live analytics on both actual and proposed portfolios, with portfolio aggregation and reporting across the whole book of accounts.

Digitize your Fixed Income Investing now to navigate challenging markets and gain a lasting competitive advantage.

Compound constraints
Custom bond ladders
Data-agnostic
Describe portfolio objective with AI
Holdings deep dive
Liquidity connected
Manage SMA at scale
Portfolio Summary with AI
Search with AI
Solve Anyway
Tax-lot and tax-loss harvesting

The smartest investment decisions are made using bondIT solutions.

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Why use Frontier?

Intuitive platform to manage Fixed Income workflows

Our platform is the perfect base to take fixed income processes into the digital era. Frontier’s UX has been built to be used in the easiest, most convenient way and to help our clients significantly increase the efficiency of their portfolio management processes.

Highly customizable and integrable into your workflows

Thanks to our flexible API infrastructure Frontier’s platform seamlessly integrates into companies’ existing processes and workflows to become the center of clients’ fixed income portfolio management. Our system also supports the integration of our clients’ internal or proprietary data.

Incorporating ESG data for market leading strategies

Incorporating ESG considerations is critical to many of our clients’ investment strategy success. Frontier’s data-agnostic and highly flexible technology is able to utilise the widest range of ESG data offered by the market. We work with clients who wish to express activist or impact views, to those wishing to reflect choices or limits, or to those that wish to better understand the implications for these consideration on the return and risk parameters in their portfolios.

How does Frontier optimize fixed income portfolios?

Frontier offers various options of portfolio optimization with regards to yields, risk, cash flows and individual constraints – at a speed and a scale that is unmatched in the market. Unlike other solutions, Frontier has been purpose built and optimized for Fixed Income investing and therefore caters to the special investment characteristics of this asset class.

bondIT is a hosted solution that optimizes Fixed Income workflows.

Portfolio objectives and bond level constraints are established as the inputs into the Algorithms. These can all be customized and configured.

The number of transactions can be specified to control turnover and transaction costs, as well as taking into account increases and decreases in cash positions. Switch proposals are based on mixed integer computing when connected to major liquidity providers to focus on tradable bonds.

When a portfolio solution is infeasible, the BondIT platform will “solve anyway” and produce the closest portfolio possible, highlighting which constraints were relaxed to achieve the result.

Real time portfolio monitoring with permission-based sharing across enterprise.

Frontier offers a full set of configurable analytics across all portfolios – to include any custom data attributes.

Frontier supports full connectivity with upstream and downstream systems. Portfolios can be imported in real time with a simple copy and paste function.

What can you build with Frontier?

Manage SMAs and models at scale

Frontier runs separately managed accounts through model management and batch rebalancing, applying one constraint set across many similar accounts simultaneously. Hundreds of personalized portfolios are handled without headcount scaling in proportion, and each still respects its own objectives, constraints and tax position. Post-trade allocation distributes executed trades across those accounts afterwards.

Build custom bond ladders

Construct ladders with staggered maturities to deliver a defined cash flow schedule. Maturity structure is solved together with yield, credit quality and client constraints inside the same optimization, rather than laddering first and checking constraints afterwards.

Run fixed income direct indexing

Hold the underlying bonds directly rather than through a fund, tracking a benchmark while tailoring the portfolio to each client’s tax position, constraints and preferences. Combines with tax-lot harvesting and model management for personalization at scale.

Harvest losses at the tax lot

Apply tax-lot and tax-loss harvesting with independent controls for short-term and long-term (more than 365 days) holdings, minimum and maximum loss thresholds. Harvesting runs inside portfolio construction and rebalancing, so tax outcomes are optimized alongside yield, duration and credit constraints.

Describe an objective, get a portfolio: Populate with AI

Describe the mandate in plain language and Populate with AI maps it to the right portfolio construction fields. Copy and paste requests directly from client communication to optimize proposals in just a few clicks and seconds. Advisors state what the client needs instead of translating requirements into optimizer inputs by hand.

Search bonds in plain language: Search with AI

Type a request such as “AA tax-exempt municipal bonds yielding more than 5% in NJ” and Search with AI detects the relevant criteria and applies them as filters automatically. There is no screener syntax to learn.

Explain any portfolio instantly: Portfolio Summary with AI

Generates client-ready, plain-language descriptions of yield, risk, duration and exposure for live portfolios and for rebalance proposals, turning an optimizer output into something you can put in front of a client without rewriting it.

Frontier Architecture

Discover fixed income portfolio optimization at the click of a button. Our platform will help you make quicker, more informed decisions and enable you to measure market-related and security specific risk exposures for your portfolios.

Frontend

(Web app Application)

Application API

External API

(data but also external risk models)

Business Micro
Services

Infra
(“Engine”)

AWS
Resources

AWS Comp.
S3

Infra
(“Engine”)