BondAdviser, which was officially launched yesterday, is a joint project of Geoff Malkin and Nicholas Yaxley.
Mr Malkin, who has more than 30 years of experience in the Australian and Asia bond markets, is the company's managing director; while Mr Yaxley will bring his experience at Morningstar, Lonsec and JP Morgan Asset Management to the head of research role.
Speaking to InvestorDaily, Mr Malkin said BondAdviser is not aligned with any distribution house, and as such would have no interest in whether clients buy, sell or hold a particular security.
"If a security is a buy, we’ll call it a buy and we’ll say why. And we’ll also analyse the underlying issuer as well to give investors an idea of what we think about the issue – is it stable, is it deteriorating or is improving," he said.
BondAdviser will cover the approximately 80 ASX-listed interest rate securities, as well as another 130 unlisted over-the-counter corporate bonds, Mr Malkin said.
"It’s an opaque sort of a market and that’s one of the key tenets of our business model – to be more transparent about that," he said.
"The independent research is very important in the marketplace because it’s not being done to any degree. In many cases there’s a tie up with houses that have a distribution function," Mr Malkin said.
BondAdviser will have a subscription-only business model, he said.
"We are pretty retail bond-focused, so we concentrate on those securities which an investment adviser could reasonably get hold of and we attach a compliant report to it," Mr Malkin said.
As well as an education service about bond terminology, the BondAdviser website will also provide financial planners with online tools and portfolio management.
"We’ve been testing the tools out on some advisers," Mr Malkin said.
"[The tools] allow them to compare stocks, create a portfolio and generate a report in the fixed interest world that helps them with their [record of advice] and [statement of advice]," he said.
