Income Asset Management Group (ASX:IAM) is a full-service income specialist, advising on about $3bn of bonds and syndicated loans as demand for fixed income grows.
Darryl Bruce, Executive Director of Fixed Income Sales, highlights the team’s depth of experience, and explains IAM’s role in helping wholesale investors understand and access corporate bonds and syndicated loans directly rather than through funds or ETFs. He frames bonds as investors acting as the banker with known interest payments and maturity dates, using the capital structure ladder to show why senior and subordinated debt can deliver stable, lower volatility returns while filling a defensive role in portfolios.
Darryl outlines why larger investors increasingly prefer a direct bond portfolio. Advantages include control over cash flow timing, certainty of maturity values, full transparency of holdings and lower ongoing costs. Drawing on IAM’s example portfolio of ten investment grade household names yielding about 5.73 percent, he notes that clients can add higher-yielding bonds or syndicated loans to lift returns while still relying on historically low default rates in investment grade credit. He discusses portfolio construction, emphasising that many investors shift toward fixed income as they age to prioritise capital stability, and addresses the misconception that bonds are complex by returning to the simplicity of a five-year, six per cent coupon example.
To hear more from Darryl Bruce on direct bond strategies, syndicated loan opportunities and building defensive income portfolios, watch the full presentation.
