Blake Lynch Discusses Industry Trends around Operational Efficiency & Portfolio Management Strategy [video]

Our Head of Sales, Blake Lynch, sat down to discuss his recent experiences and observations from engaging with asset and wealth managers across the industry. Throughout his travels, he has noticed common trends and challenges these professionals are facing, particularly in the realms of operational efficiency and portfolio management strategy.

Blake highlights the persistent reliance on outdated tools, like Excel, and the need for more integrated, flexible solutions that can streamline workflows and better support fixed income investment strategies. Blake also discusses the increasing interest in innovative strategies such as tax loss harvesting, custom indexing, and direct indexing, along with the demand for scalable technology solutions that facilitate these approaches.

As he delves into the nuances of the industry’s evolution, Blake underscores how IMTC’s cloud-native platform is uniquely positioned to address these challenges, providing a comprehensive, modern solution that enables managers to efficiently handle both taxable and tax-exempt fixed income portfolios with a high degree of customization and integration.

Want to see our fixed income platform in action? Request a demo today.

Video Transcript

Hey, everyone. Blake Lynch here, Head of Sales at IMTC. Really great to speak with you all today. What I wanted to do is actually share some of the stories from the road. I’ve been on the road for a few weeks now and hearing a lot of the same things we’ve heard in previous years, but I really wanted to emphasize the two main challenges that we continue to hear from fixed income investment managers, whether that’s managing individual portfolios, blended accounts, or SMAs.

There are two main themes that we continue to hear. One of those is operational and business-focused, and the other is portfolio management and firm strategy-focused.

So what we’re hearing when we engage with folks is that people are still having to do too much Excel gymnastics. They’re going through their workflows, jumping through different platforms and hoops, but ultimately they’re going back to Excel. This is primarily due to a lot of the legacy platforms or platforms that exist in the market today, which tend to be equity-focused with some band-aids to support the fixed income workflow. It’s 2025 today. That’s unacceptable. It’s important to have tools that are flexible enough to integrate with other solutions that can complement those existing workflows. That’s primarily how IMTC is helping—by plugging into those existing systems and really scaling up those businesses.

The second area is portfolio management and strategy. Everyone’s seeing what’s going on in the markets right now. People are a little nervous and are trying to figure out where they can get the best bang for their buck as far as exposures go. A lot of people are choosing to move to fixed income as yields are back, and what people are looking to do is offer new exciting strategies, new wrappers, and more customization across all these portfolios.

When thinking about how we can help on the operational and business side, people are looking for more automation and specifically optimization of fixed income portfolios. They’re looking to build more customized solutions, which obviously creates challenges around scale if you don’t have the right technology. With IMTC, we’re respecting all those personalized one-off rules and guidelines that may need to exist at a portfolio level and helping you manage your overall guidelines and strategies of your model portfolios. This is a streamlined way of getting hundreds or thousands of accounts invested by automating the rule building and embedding those rules at the portfolio level, then matching that with live actual inventory with click-to-trade functionality.

Thinking about managed data and integrations is a huge component of what we can help with, reducing some of the operational friction of managing individual bond portfolios. Data flows should be easy nowadays. If you’re using a tool that’s inflexible and not willing to connect to other solutions to ensure you have a good investment experience, it’s time to probably look at other solutions that can seamlessly connect into those different systems and make sure you bring in all of your relevant portfolio management data points into your platform.

IMTC is built on modern cloud-based technology. Every line of code we’ve ever written is in the cloud, and we are a true cloud-native portfolio management solution, whereas many other platforms that exist today are still managing on-prem solutions with multiple different versions. Again, this is unacceptable in today’s technology environment. There’s no more versioning. People are getting the most up-to-date versions of our platform every single time we make a release, helping them adopt an iOS model to their fixed income portfolio management solutions.

When thinking about the new strategies and portfolio management type initiatives that we’re hearing, tax loss harvesting continues to be a trend. Crossover strategies, managing taxable and muni fixed income portfolios in the same account, ensuring you’re getting the best after-tax bang for the buck in your client accounts. Characteristic-based models on the taxable side enable more flexibility for taxable managers to really get the best bonds into the portfolios and find the most attractive value across the capital structure. Another big theme is direct or custom indexing. This can happen today by having a true flexible solution that can scale up and scale down with your business.

Another thing we’re hearing from some large asset managers is that there’s great wrapper leveling. We’re seeing more flows into SMAs, particularly because they can be offered at more attractive levels. Minimums are coming down, more money is flowing in as a result, and people are looking to feel like they’re being handheld when they’re thinking about their investment decisions. What I heard recently on the road is that clients want to treat their accounts like a snowflake. If you look at the portfolio as a whole, they’ll often rhyme. But when you actually look at a snowflake under the microscope, it has different branches, designs, and patterns. The end client is getting outcomes in line with the portfolio management’s best ideas, slightly bespoke to that end client.

These are just a few of the things we’re hearing, but really what people are looking for is a solution that can support all your fixed income needs, whether it’s taxable or tax-exempt, in a single solution. IMTC is proud of our ability to do that. In fact, most of our clients today are managing both on our platform in a highly scalable, efficient manner that’s bespoke for each individual investment manager on the platform. It’s bespoke in the terms that our platform is flexible enough to support all their workflows.

If you have any questions or want to learn more about what we’re hearing on the road, we’re happy to share that. Please reach out to me at IMTC or the team here. We’d be honored to connect.

Thanks so much. Really appreciate it.

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