Spotlight Interview: Pat Duffner on How His Buy-Side Experience Shapes Technology That Delivers

Q: Pat, can you start by sharing a bit about your background and what brought you to IMTC?

I’m Pat Duffner, Chief Strategy Officer at IMTC. I’ve been here for six years and have worked across sales, client success, and product. Before IMTC, I spent a decade at J.P. Morgan in a range of roles across the investment bank, sales and trading, and the private bank.

Across all of those experiences, one thing kept surfacing: firms really needed better tools to understand portfolio risk, connect their workflows, and analyze portfolios at scale. That’s what led me to IMTC, where I saw the opportunity for technology to improve the full fixed income lifecycle, including trading and everything around it.

Q: What initially attracted you to IMTC and its technology-driven approach?

When I first came across IMTC, I was impressed by the vision and the product. I had access to a demo environment where I built a sample portfolio and tested the Optimizer, and it generated a more efficient set of trades than I would have put together manually.

That was a turning point for me. It showed how technology could replicate, and in some cases improve on, what portfolio managers do every day, especially across large numbers of accounts. Given my background across investing, trading, and operations, I could see how a platform like IMTC could help firms make better decisions, reduce friction, and scale efficiently.

Q: You were recently promoted to Chief Strategy Officer. How are you thinking about this role?

My focus is on where the platform needs to be in 12 to 18 months and how we get there. That means looking beyond immediate client requests to understand where the market is heading, what competitive dynamics are shifting, and which investments will matter most over time.

My years in business development keep me grounded in what’s practical. I spent a lot of time talking directly with portfolio managers, traders, and operations teams about their challenges, and those conversations made it pretty clear what actually drives value versus what just sounds good in a roadmap. I bring that same lens to strategy now, pushing us to think ambitiously about the platform while staying honest about what clients genuinely need and what we can deliver well.

Q: Over your career, what’s the biggest change you’ve seen in fixed income portfolio management?

The biggest shift has been the rise of personalization at scale. What started with ESG has expanded into broader customization across portfolios, and it’s happening regardless of account size. Clients can now tailor exposures, adjust strategies, and incorporate features like tax-loss harvesting in fixed income.

We’re also seeing more specialized strategies, including after-tax approaches that optimize across munis and corporates based on client-specific factors like geography and income. Technology is really what makes this level of customization scalable with a focus on after-tax income.

Q: Despite the progress, what challenges are asset and wealth managers still facing?

Automation has improved, but the ecosystem is still pretty uneven. Not every participant operates at the same level of efficiency, which creates friction, particularly around things like tax lot management across custodians.

The other piece is the operational and compliance complexity that comes with personalization. A lot of firms are still relying on fragmented systems and manual processes to connect portfolio management, trading, and operations. The opportunity is to reduce that friction so teams can focus on decision-making rather than reconciliation and exception handling.

Q: How has your prior experience informed your work at IMTC?

I can honestly say I’ve sat in the seat of our clients, and not just the portfolio managers and traders. I’ve worked in the middle and back office too, including on compliance and risk teams. At J.P. Morgan, I supported the credit trading desk, worked with asset managers and pension funds, and later focused on fixed income solutions for ultra-high-net-worth clients. I also spent time on reconciliations, trade settlement, and operational processes.

My background spans the entire lifecycle of a trade, and that’s what we’re bringing to our clients. We’re helping clients across portfolio management, trading, and the post-trade and back-office functions, including how the data connects between each step and how it flows to the next person who needs to act on it. That end-to-end view is where we’re having a real impact, across firms ranging from small RIAs to larger asset managers.

Q: IMTC has you overseeing both client success and product. How does that structure influence the platform?

We’ve intentionally combined product and client success to create a tight feedback loop. When your system is generating executable trades, alignment between what clients need and what the product delivers is critical. That’s non-negotiable for any platform offering optimization and automation at this level.

What it means in practice is that feedback gets built into the platform quickly. Clients often see their input reflected in new features within weeks, not quarters. Over time, that’s strengthened relationships and turned clients into real contributors to how the platform evolves.

Q: Can you share an example of a workflow or process pain point that IMTC’s technology now addresses?

Portfolio optimization is a strong example. Whether you’re investing cash, reinvesting proceeds, or executing swaps, our Optimizer evaluates a wide range of possibilities and selects the most efficient outcome based on the parameters you’ve set.

We’ve extended that approach across the trade lifecycle too, connecting portfolio construction, compliance, order generation, and the downstream processes. That integration reduces manual handoffs, improves data consistency, and helps minimize errors as portfolios get more complex.

Q: What kind of feedback are you hearing from clients who use IMTC?

Our clients are generally forward-thinking and focused on modernization, especially anything that streamlines their workflow. The most consistent piece of feedback we hear is that we actually deliver on what we sold them, which is a meaningful differentiator in an industry where that isn’t always the case. We take that seriously and know we have to keep earning it.

They also value our partnership approach. We’re a tech vendor, but we’re willing to go beyond that and wear a lot of hats, whether that means helping a client launch a new strategy or offering consultative advice on how to grow their business. It’s not a “here are the button clicks, good luck” kind of relationship. That level of collaboration is what builds long-term relationships and keeps our clients genuinely invested in how the platform evolves.

Q: Looking ahead, what trends do you think will define fixed income technology over the next five years?

In the past, there was a push for portfolio managers to learn how to code. Going forward, the emphasis will really shift toward understanding investment concepts at scale while letting technology handle the execution.

Data and AI are going to play a big role. There’s a significant amount of data out there, including live inventory, RFQs, and credit analysis, that isn’t really being built into decision-making by current fixed income teams. The goal is to bring that data into workflows the right way, with optimization and AI helping automate decisions and enable customization at scale.

Q: You mentioned AI. How are your clients thinking about it, and how is IMTC approaching it?

There’s definitely a wait-and-see mentality among clients when it comes to tech vendors providing AI. A lot of vendors have rushed AI out without getting it right, and it’s felt like a check-the-box exercise.

Our approach is to build a strong foundation first. That means robust portfolio management, compliance, and optimization, with AI layered on top to enhance those capabilities. The system still needs to have the core features and functionality in place, and then AI becomes one more piece of scale and automation. When we do it, we’ll do it right, and we’ll do it with the client’s best interest in mind.

Q: Finally, what advice would you give to portfolio managers or CIOs starting their digitization journey?

Technology adoption really isn’t optional anymore. Firms that invest in it are gaining a competitive edge, and the ones that delay risk falling behind. Fee pressure and client demand for customization are only increasing.

The key is to focus on scalable workflows, so that managing 10,000 portfolios doesn’t require exponentially more resources than managing 1,000. And partnering with providers who will evolve alongside you is just as important. Firms that treat technology as a strategic enabler, and that maintain strong feedback loops with their vendors, will be best positioned to succeed.

This paper is intended for information and discussion purposes only. The information contained in this publication is derived from data obtained from sources believed by IMTC to be reliable and is given in good faith, but no guarantees are made by IMTC with regard to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability of the information presented. Nothing within this paper should be relied upon as investment advice, and nothing within shall confer rights or remedies upon, you or any of your employees, creditors, holders of securities or other equity holders or any other person. Any opinions expressed reflect the current judgment of the authors of this paper and do not necessarily represent the opinion of IMTC. IMTC expressly disclaims all representations and warranties, express, implied, statutory or otherwise, whatsoever, including, but not limited to: (i) warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, suitability, usage, title, or noninfringement; (ii) that the contents of this white paper are free from error; and (iii) that such contents will not infringe third-party rights. The information contained within this paper is the intellectual property of IMTC and any further dissemination of this paper should attribute rights to IMTC and include this disclaimer.