Australia’s fixed income market is entering a new phase—offering investors greater diversification, broader credit exposure, and more flexible maturity profiles than ever before. For the private wealth sector, this presents a powerful opportunity to tailor portfolios in ways that listed products often can’t match.
Yet while the investment logic is strong, the infrastructure supporting it is often fragmented. Many firms still manage execution, settlement, custody, and reporting across disparate systems, creating inefficiencies, reconciliation issues, and operational risk. Minimum parcel sizes in over-the-counter (OTC) markets (traditionally $500,000) have also limited accessibility for many clients.
Today, scaling fixed income is no longer just about finding the right securities—it’s about enabling the operational foundation that allows advisers and wealth managers to act with speed, confidence, and efficiency.
An integrated approach to a fragmented market
Global custodial leaders are converging toward unicentric digital platforms—consolidating execution, settlement, custody and reporting into a single environment. This reflects both the market’s accelerating shift toward T+1 settlement and growing demand for seamless, tech-enabled infrastructure. Perpetual Corporate Trust has embraced this direction with a purpose-built solution for the private wealth sector, enabling direct access to both domestic and global fixed income markets.
Our fully integrated platform eliminates fragmentation by uniting execution, middle office, custody, and reporting into one cohesive workflow. Designed specifically for wholesale wealth managers and advisers, it reduces friction, automates key processes, and enhances visibility across every stage of the trade lifecycle. Importantly, the platform operates at the underlying client level, ensuring security, personalisation and compliance.
A major advantage of this infrastructure is that it lowers the entry point for OTC fixed income participation. Investors can now access the market at parcel sizes as low as $10,000, making fixed income strategies more flexible and accessible across a broader range of clients.
The platform enables end-to-end automation, starting from order booking and execution through to settlement and reporting. Trade activity and orders can be monitored in real time, with seamless integration into Bloomberg’s ALLQ and VCON for deal creation, and export functionality to Bloomberg TSOX. A smart matching engine reconciles orders and trades efficiently to optimise execution outcomes, while the platform supports multi-currency transactions across AUD, USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, SGD and NZD.
Once trades are executed, settlement flows automatically to Perpetual’s operations team, with full support for both Austraclear and Euroclear. Post-settlement, securities are held in custody by Perpetual, with corporate actions processed automatically and income or maturity proceeds disbursed to nominated accounts of underlying clients. Daily reconciliation of assets and cash is performed.
Compliance and governance are core to the platform’s design. It aligns fully with ASIC RG133 and RG166 requirements, maintaining rigorous capital adequacy. Oversight is further supported by external audits (including GS007 and KPMG Custody Audit 3501), a CPS 231-compliant control environment, and a robust Enterprise GRC program. The solution is backed by licensed custodian and trustee entities capable of supporting complex trust structures and satisfying RG166 and NTA thresholds.
To support downstream operations, the platform also includes a comprehensive suite of reporting services. These cover portfolio valuations, income tracking, and corporate actions reporting, and export file formats compatible with a wide range of client systems.
By consolidating the entire fixed income workflow—from execution and matching, to settlement, custody and reporting—Perpetual Corporate Trust enables advisers, wealth firms and portfolio managers to operate with greater efficiency, agility and scale. Beyond reducing operational risk and overhead, this infrastructure empowers firms to offer differentiated, direct investment solutions in the evolving OTC bond market—without the historical barriers of high entry thresholds and administrative burden.
Looking ahead
As fixed income markets globalise and investor demands become more bespoke, operational strength is becoming a key differentiator. The ability to deliver faster, safer, and more transparent direct investment solutions—backed by integrated technology and institutional-grade governance—will define future market leaders.
Perpetual Corporate Trust is proud to support clients like NAB Private Wealth and Income Asset Management in scaling their fixed income capabilities. With nearly $250 billion in funds under administration in custody and over two decades of experience, we offer a platform that’s ready for what’s next.
For those looking to participate more actively in the OTC market, now is the time to ask: Is your infrastructure helping or hindering your ability to deliver optimal client investment solutions for direct fixed income?
For more information on Perpetual’s Fixed Income Intelligence solution please contact our Head of Institutional Sales and Relationship Management, Perpetual Digital, Emily Boden at emily.boden@perpetual.com.au