Fidelity launches digital fixed-income trading tool for advisers

Fidelity Investments on Thursday announced the launch of a new digital fixed-income trading tool for advisers, Bond Beacon, that will roll out to the company’s 3,900 clearing and custody clients this month. 

The tool, the first of its kind developed by Fidelity, integrates existing technology for managing pre-trade, at-trade and post-trade fixed-income holdings on a single platform via its recently revamped adviser technology platform Wealthscape. Through Bond Beacon, advisers can manage their existing holdings or portfolios, as well as construct new ones, analyze and interact with the market and manage order flow, all in one interface. 

Starting with a pre-trade perspective, Fidelity is integrating all of its clients’ portfolios into Bond Beacon so advisers can see holdings that they custody at Fidelity tied into the same workflow platform as at-trade and post-trade, said Renzo Iturrino, head of fixed income product solutions for Fidelity Institutional’s capital markets group. The pre-trade section also includes portfolio construction and management tools that are fully integrated with price and risk analytics. 

“We are aggregating multiple data points to bring in a broader universe of bonds for advisers to interact with,” Iturrino said. “If an adviser wants to liquidate a position or set up positions out of a portfolio, they can do that in Bond Beacon, and their holdings information gets updated in real time.” 

At-trade, the pricing analytics allow an adviser to search through hundreds of bonds, and Bond Beacon will provide the most competitive pricing available. With risk analytics, Bond Beacon performs assessments of how the bond choices in the portfolio may impact returns under a range of market scenarios.

“If you bought 100 bonds in a particular name, Bond Beacon provides an adviser all the other quotes that may be out there in the marketplace,” Iturrino said. “Also, the tool generates proposals related to that portfolio and will include all relevant bond facts.” 

The tool then offers reporting with portfolio analytics, giving advisers a comprehensive view of pre-trade, at-trade and post-trade workflow.

Bond Beacon is currently piloting with 40 advisers who have been using it for about two months, Iturrino said.

The launch of the digital fixed-income tool comes on the heels of Fidelity’s January announcement that it had launched a new suite of bond model portfolios, including four fixed-income strategies leveraging both mutual funds and exchange-traded funds.