Spotlight Interview: Steve King on Scaling Fixed Income Through Technology

Q: Steve, could you start by introducing yourself and your background?

Steve King: My name is Steve King, and I’m the Senior Product Manager at IMTC. My role is to make sure the product evolves in line with client needs.

Before IMTC, I spent nearly 17 years at Putnam Investments, which later became part of Franklin Templeton. I started in the technology group as a systems consultant and analyst, then moved into trading operations, focusing on fixed income trade settlements and middle/back-office workflows.

For the last seven years there, I worked directly on the fixed income investment floor as an analyst, covering attribution reporting, analytic modeling, and portfolio construction—tracking sector ratios across mutual fund products. Toward the end of my tenure, I helped launch a taxable SMA short-duration product. That’s when I first worked with IMTC as a business user. I spent about 18 months partnering with the team to create processes that mirrored how portfolio managers wanted to manage exposures, not just by CUSIP weights but by analytics, ratings, and sector balance.

Q: What’s the biggest change you’ve seen in fixed income portfolio management during your career?

Steve King: The biggest shift has been the move away from actively managed mutual funds. Investors have increasingly leaned toward low-fee ETFs or customizable SMAs. At Putnam and Franklin, we responded by launching both ETFs and SMA products. This change in investor preference reshaped how managers thought about product design.

Q: And what persistent challenges are managers still facing today?

Steve King: Fee pressure is still the major challenge. Even in taxable fixed income—which is one of the most fee-resilient asset classes—there’s pressure to scale without inflating costs.

That’s where IMTC helps. Our platform enables managers to scale up with minimal overhead. A single team can manage hundreds or thousands of accounts without massive increases in headcount. Scalability and cost control are what asset managers are really after.

Q: How did your past experience as a client of IMTC influence the problems you’re solving today?

Steve King: When I was a client, many of the pain points we flagged have since been addressed in the platform. For example, we wanted the flexibility to manage relative to models and execution preferences. That feedback directly informed product development.

Now, on this side of the table, I can recognize client needs more quickly because I’ve lived them. It makes it easier to anticipate problems and help shape solutions that work across firms.

Q: What transformation do clients experience when they modernize their portfolio management with IMTC?

Steve King: The biggest transformation is realizing they can scale SMA businesses without the costs they once assumed. IMTC allows them to manage SMAs like mini mutual funds—focusing on characteristics like duration and credit quality, rather than holding identical securities.

Our optimizer is key here. It lets managers rebalance portfolios quickly relative to their models, producing actionable buy lists that traders can actually execute. Clients also value the ability to customize SMAs without turning them into one-off burdens. The optimizer integrates those custom rules seamlessly into the workflow.

Q: What feedback or “aha moments” have you heard from clients?

Steve King: A big aha moment is realizing they’re not locked into a single execution stream. Clients can send SMA orders to their native OMS, directly to an execution venue, or to multiple venues for best execution—just like with mutual funds.

That realization—that they can scale SMAs and still trade with flexibility—makes clients confident they don’t need to throw more people at the problem to grow.

Q: Looking ahead, what trends will shape fixed income tech over the next five years?

Steve King: Everyone’s experimenting with AI, but the key will be using it effectively. AI can sift through large datasets or summarize text, but I’m skeptical about it replacing human judgment in areas like credit selection. Firms need to be wary of oversold claims.

The other big trend is cloud adoption. Cloud systems allow firms to scale compute capacity up and down efficiently, paying only for what they use. That’s a major advantage over traditional on-premise systems, and IMTC embraced that early on.

Q: Finally, what advice would you give PMs or CIOs beginning their digitization journey?

Steve King: Be cautious about promises around AI—know what the technology actually does and where human oversight is still needed. And prioritize cloud-based solutions over legacy on-prem systems. Cloud scalability is what will let you grow efficiently without overextending resources.