In his new role as chief executive officer at financial technology provider and registered investment advisor BondWave LLC, Michael Ruvo is aiming to reinvent the accessibility of data within the fixed income market, including municipals.
"The market is crying for better solutions in fixed-income that more closely resemble those that have existed in the equity markets for many years," the new CEO told The Bond Buyer this week.
Ruvo, who was appointed CEO on May 11, remains in his previous title of president – a title he held since 2013 – while aiming to improve and enhance the Wheaton, Ill.-based firm's existing role as a fixed income solution provider for a wide range of clients in the financial industry.
BondWave has about 720,000 accounts and $123 billion of fixed income assets running on its platform. The company aims to facilitate, leverage, and simplify individual bond investing, while offering customizable tools to help advisors with bond pricing analysis, bond basics, trade opportunity mining, business intelligence and reporting, and compliance assistance.
"Fixed income as a whole is fragmented, needs better transparency, and is at a place where the industry is ready for a change," Ruvo said in a May 12 press release about his promotion.
"We are entering a time of unprecedented change in the market that will require new types of tools and intelligence that enable access to individual bond investing with workflow tools that support a fiduciary model," Ruvo said in an interview. "We think BondWave is uniquely positioned to provide value in this market in a way that is agnostic to the liquidity and the transaction."
BondWave clients include fixed income trading desks, large and regional broker dealers and wealth managers, registered investment advisors, and institutional sales operations. In addition, it also powers the fixed income analytics for one of the largest clearing firms in the industry where they reach approximately 16,000 users at 500 firms.
Both traders and advisor use BondWave's investing tool for portfolio creation, automated monitoring and reporting, and rebalancing, while also improving the communication between the trading desks and advisors, and their clients.
Municipals are a large part of the transformation, Ruvo said.
"While munis will always be unique, we believe that enough data and technology exists to enhance transparency and efficiency in all areas of the fixed income market," Ruvo said. "We have always viewed municipal bonds as a critical component of the markets and the infrastructure of the country. Many of our capabilities started there, we have vast experience at the firm with that asset class, and plan to continue to look for opportunities to innovate in that space."
He intends to defragment the bond and fixed income space and improve transparency between the trading desk, advisors and clients by using updated technology and tools.
"BondWave is focused on information and intelligence, not execution," Ruvo said in the interview.
"BondWave is in the midst of a technology transformation that will consolidate all of our capabilities into a single platform with flexibility to provide different levels of service to different types of users," he said. "It will be enabled by a powerful data warehouse that, when combined with customer holdings data, we believe will create context and intelligence for firms' fixed-income businesses."
The firm may even collaborate with other service providers – such as alternative trading systems, custodians, and multi-asset class platforms, to develop ways to serve the entire fixed-income marketplace, according to Ruvo.
Prior to joining BondWave, Ruvo spent over 10 years at DPC DATA, in the role of president and director for the last seven years, during which time he enhanced disclosure and monitoring products for the municipal bond market.
Previously, Ruvo served as executive vice president of global operations at Capital Access International, a provider of global fixed-income data services, and helped facilitate the sale of the company to Reuters in 2002.
He holds a bachelor of science degree in finance from Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, Pa.
Ruvo replaces CEO Russ Graham, who held the position for 15 years, and has joined First Trust Portfolios L.P., BondWave's parent company.
"His vision for the fixed income space is to solve the challenges that plague traders, advisors and investors," Graham said in the release. "The evolution of data, technology, market structure, and regulation are being embraced to support an open, transparent market that supports a regulatory workflow, and I look forward to continuing to support Michael as he leads BondWave into this new era," Graham said.
"Where the liquidity-focused service providers emphasize trading and execution, our mission is to be the premier, next generation fixed income intelligence platform to facilitate insight-driven trading, enhance market liquidity, and improve fixed income transparency," Ruvo said.
