BondDesk unveils retail fixed income wealth management platform

The next generation system, known as the BondWorks wealth management platform, has replaced the incumbent third-party workstation at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC and is now live across the firm's network of 750 financial advisors. During the next several months BondDesk will roll out the BondWorks platform to many of its largest clients, with the ultimate goal of deploying the system across its entire customer base of more than 100,000 financial advisors.

The release of the new platform further cements BondDesk's leadership position in the retail bond market, marking a dramatic advance over BondDesk's previous advisor offering, which was already widely considered the most sophisticated solution in the industry. BondWorks is designed specifically to streamline advisor workflows and simplify their day-to-day activities. Its intuitive user interface, robust wizard technology, intelligent search functionality, and advanced alerting and monitoring tools represent a giant leap forward, creating a wealth management platform that is optimized to address the specific needs of financial advisors who invest in fixed income.

"BondWorks is a game-changer for the retail bond market," said Greg Stockett, BondDesk's Acting CEO. "Historically, bonds have lagged behind other markets such as equities and even foreign exchange when it comes to technology and decision support tools, but the BondWorks platform takes retail bond investing to a level not previously seen or available. Advisors can now easily and efficiently engage with the bond market in a sophisticated and intuitive way, benefiting from fully transparent bids and offers, extensive market surveillance, and real-time streaming data that supports their workflow. We truly believe it represents the future of the retail bond market."

Stockett continued, "Because investing in bonds is so much simpler using the BondWorks platform, financial advisors are now in a position to easily build custom portfolios of individual bonds and deliver fixed income solutions that are truly tailored to the needs of their clients. For the first time, advisors can invest in individual bonds as easily as they can invest in bond funds."

Essential tasks that have historically involved time-consuming manual processes are now controlled through automated, easy-to-use BondWorks wizards. It also has a variety of built-in monitoring tools that allow users to track and receive alerts in real-time on those events they care most about, such as the status of open orders and price changes for particular CUSIPs. Search functionality is also greatly improved, providing advisors the ability to quickly initiate common or recent searches, as well as conduct new searches based on multiple criteria (e.g., keywords, tickers, CUSIPs, etc.). Other new features include a handy bond comparison tool and sophisticated graphical representations of the market from which advisors can directly initiate orders.

Kevin Reed, Managing Director at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, said: "The BondWorks platform is unlike any fixed income system we've ever seen. From an advisor's standpoint, it is both remarkably powerful and easy to use, which made the decision to switch from our previous platform easy. We look forward to seeing the difference it will make in increasing efficiencies in our retail business while allowing our advisors to spend more time serving clients. The implementation process was successful across the Janney platform and had very little impact on our day-to-day operations, thanks in large part to BondWorks' intuitive nature, and the support provided by both the BondDesk and Janney teams during the rollout."