A Fixed Income Intelligence case study!
By Emily Boden, Head of Institutional Sales and Relationship Management, Perpetual
For PCT, the Nab Wealth/FII client relationship is a near perfect realisation of PCT’s mission to enable the industry to be more effective, effective, economical while ensuring cyber security and compliance.
At its simplest FII modernises an antiquated, disjointed investment workflow for OTC products.
It makes the fixed income investment process more streamlined and simpler for the industry.
Innovation in action: behind the scenes of the PCT/NAB Wealth collaboration
PCT does not operate in a vacuum – it works with the Private Wealth industry to identify and solve problems.
In early 2023, NAB Private Wealth embarked on the process of relaunching its global bond offerings for private wealth clients. In 2024, NAB Wealth appointed PCT to provide an end-to-end bond administration and custody SaaS solution to benefit their extensive adviser network, and improve customer experience. The resulting SaaS solution is PCT’s Fixed Income Intelligence.
PCT’s Head of Institutional Sales and Relationship Management for Perpetual Digital, Emily Boden, spoke with two key members from the NAB Private Wealth team to get their perspective on being first to market with the game changing technology:
- NAB Private Wealth, Head of Wholesale, Products and Markets, Marcus Christoe, provided his insights into the strategic intent behind NAB Wealth’s decision to partner with PCT; and
- NAB Private Wealth, Director of Investment Solutions, Tamara Radice explains the real-life benefits of using FII, and how it has been a gamechanger for NAB Wealth private client advisors.
Tripling FUM: Marcus Christoe explains the strategy behind the partnership!
EB: What challenge was NAB trying to solve?
MC: NAB continues to identify the $128 trillion global fixed income market as an increasingly important diversifier and stable source of income for clients. We wanted to relaunch our global bond offering to capture greater opportunities for our clients.
EB: What was the strategic intent of NAB partnering with Perpetual?
MC: We wanted to partner with Perpetual to continue to provide direct fixed income solutions for domestic bonds as well as gain access to the global fixed income markets for our NAB Private Wealth clients.
EB: Why did you end up choosing Perpetual as your partner?
MC: Look, we went out to tender across a whole series of different vendors and Perpetual was really the one that offered the most compelling solution. Also, what helped is that NAB & Perpetual had an existing close relationship.
EB: What operational benefits has Fixed Income Intelligence brought to NAB’s private wealth business?
MC: NAB wanted an end-to-end solution that covered the whole process – including research and portfolio construction, tools to help our trade execution, settlement facilities, as well as middle office functionality and sub-custody.
EB: What has the impact been of implementing FII into the NAB Private Wealth business?
Since the relaunch internally of the NAB Global Bond service we have seen a tripling of FUM across all our businesses and we’ve also seen a great level increase of satisfaction across all of our clients.
EB: Throughout the process of implementing & introducing FII – what are the realities of being an early adopter of a Perpetual SaaS solution?
NAB & Perpetual have a strong relationship across both companies. We see this as a partnership. It always takes a while to implement some of these things, but we work together. We’ve ended up with a result that has really benefitted both parties – as well as our customer.
Game changer! Tamara Radice explains the real benefits to advisers of using Fixed Income Intelligence
EB: How has Fixed Income Intelligence made it easier for you to access global fixed income markets for your clients and what specific difficulties has it eliminated?
TR: Perpetual’s fixed income technology has made it much easier for us to access global Fixed Income assets for our clients.
Specifically the solution eliminates price discovery difficulties by having access to pricing all in one place. It also helps us with liquidity constraints. What I mean by that is that historically bonds have been available to clients in parcels of $500k which for many clients is a large parcel – or too large. So the Perpetual solution facilities the ability to provide clients with smaller parcels under $500k face value.
EB How does Fixed Income Intelligence help your wealth advisors manage risk?
TR: The Perpetual Fixed Income Intelligence solution has helped us to manage risk with our clients by providing us with a broad selection of fixed income assets for the client to choose from. It means we are not making a decision for the client, we are putting the decision back in their hands as to what they are looking to invest in.
EB Reporting is key when it comes to fixed income investment. How does the solution manage reporting requests?
TR: Reporting is one of the things clients are always looking for when it comes to a fixed income solution. This particular solution enables clients to receive monthly reporting, bespoke reporting on demand, trade confirmations and maturity confirmations. It has been a real game changer for our clients
You can watch the full interview with NAB Wealth here: https://www.perpetual.com.au/corporate-trust/fixed-income-intelligence/
For more information on Perpetual’s Fixed Income Intelligence solution please contact Emily Boden at [email protected]
