May26097 Best Fixed-Income Trading Initiative 2026: Investortools Dealer Network Investortools is a leading SaaS provider for fixed-income solutions, offering a suite of products, including the Investortools Dealer Network (IDN). The IDN is revolutionizing fixed-income trading by helping clients optimize portfolios and maximize trading performance through unprecedented connectivity and deep integration of market data. The Investortools Dealer Network (IDN) began, like many good ideas, as a whiteboard sketch. “At the time, the concept seemed almost impossible because the infrastructure required to support it simply didn’t exist in the industry,” said Investortools Co-CEO Jon Anderson. This can be difficult to believe given the IDN’s capabilities today. The network, which provides each client with an extensive view of their live secondary market, enables users to both sell their bonds and engage with live tradable offers in one interface. The need for the IDN became apparent over a decade ago as Investortools observed clients using our software to make investment decisions but relying on separate systems to execute trades. Jon Anderson explains, “We recognized that clients were already using our technology to determine what to buy and sell. The logical next step was to bring portfolio construction and trading together in a single, integrated workflow.” Jon Anderson and current Head of Sales James Morris began turning the concept into a viable solution. The idea quickly progressed into active development, followed by conversations with a top five dealer that ultimately became the IDN’s first direct dealer partner. In July of 2019, the first trade was executed via the IDN. Over the next few years, the network began to grow and mature into a broader trading ecosystem. “The IDN is not just another place to buy bonds,” said Jason Anderson, an Account Executive and Vice President at Investortools. “The IDN is the intersection of almost the entire secondary market with your portfolios, your analytics, and your rules. You’re not just finding any bond; you’re finding the best bonds that best fit your strategy and compliance before you commit to buy them.” Historically, Jason Anderson explained, “There have been different electronic trading platforms you could use to buy bonds. But you had to swivel your chair between where you evaluate fit and where you buy bonds, then swivel back to take care of the necessary post-trade operations. It made trading a lot less efficient.” With the IDN, everything lives in one fully integrated ecosystem. Clients can leverage automation to simultaneously assess multiple bonds, pre-allocate and size trades, extend bid lists to multiple venues and dealers, customize and save searches, and manage custodial allocation and delivery instructions – all combined with native, real-time analytics. “Analytics are not typically a native function of an EMS,” explained Bobby Herron, Account Executive and Vice President. “This is another unique piece of the IDN because analytics are fully integrated into the portfolio management system. The second you enter a price, yield, or spread, you know all of the key analytics for that security: the duration, convexity, the option-adjusted analytics. The best part is that the analytics are going to be consistent and reflect your firm’s unique perspective, which eliminates calculation bias.” This creates a more efficient investment process and puts industry-leading analytics at the center of every decision. “We’ve overlaid what you need with the best opportunities,” said Jason Anderson. For example, if a firm needs $20 million in New York, single-A bonds across 50,000 portfolios, they can leverage the IDN to identify the best combination of items to fill that need. “This is far more effective than hunting and pecking across multiple systems and venues,” Jason Anderson continues. This increased efficiency creates meaningful scalability, allowing clients to manage more portfolios without adding more people. “The platform has enabled leaner teams to compete more effectively and grow AUM,” Jason Anderson notes. Herron echoes this. “We’ve been told by a number of SMA managers that it used to take them between two weeks to a month to fully invest an account… those same clients are now accomplishing that in two days or less. Those are real results being driven by IDN-powered features, such as Trade Assist, Portfolio Builder, automatic rules-based allocation, and autoexecution. Now you can scale your business without disproportionately adding headcount and expense.” This ease and scalability are a big part of what has fueled the adoption of the IDN over time. The connectivity, which facilitated its first trade in 2019, has now accounted for more than a million trades, representing billions in trade volume each month. “The IDN is transforming fixed-income trading,” Jon Anderson said. “Our clients are currently achieving tremendous results, and we are all excited to continue delivering innovation that moves the market forward.” Contact: Jessica McDaniel Company: Investortools Web Address: https://www.investortools.com/
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