As staff work from home, and better overview across asset classes and data formats is needed to standardise processes, brokers and asset managers invest increasing amounts in trade surveillance solutions. A report from Aite-Novarica Group has mapped the provider landscape and predicts that the rapid growth will continue.
19 vendors of trade and market surveillance solutions are surveyed in Aite’s report (authored by analyst Vinod Jain, who was with us at PostTrade 360° Stockholm, then on the topic of custodian strategies).
The Covid-19 pandemic is one part of the explanation behind a total growth rate of 18 percent lately, but many other trends contribute too. The need to integrate surveillance of trade, market and communication is one; regulatory pressures yet another. Until 2024, the market is expected to double.
Giants like FIS, Bloomberg and NICE Actimize are on the supplier list but also smaller players, the smallest has only 8 employees. Aite encourages buyers to take notice of the uniquenesses between the providers and the approaches they take. And when selecting one, be ready to look at cutting-edge approaches that incorporate many data inputs, the analyst firm argues. “There is a clear demand for platforms that can integrate structured and unstructured data and recreate the whole trading scenario.”
Buyers are happy
Clients are overall well satisfied with their vendors (graded individually in separate supplement reports). Retention rates are high, and so are the vendors’ investments in research and development as they seek to make their solutions better and more uniquely profiled under increasing competition.
“Existing and new vendors are providing significantly differentiated offerings such as risk-based surveillance techniques or using machine learning techniques to configure the monitoring parameters. Vendors must pick their spots in a more challenging request for proposal environment to meet the client demands,” the report states.
Old suppliers have scalability and proven technology on their side, but challengers can still benefit from starting with a clean slate.
On 30 September, the second day of PostTrade 360° Copenhagen 2021, Vinod Jain will speak on yet another topic: the industry’s readiness for moving to a “T+1” settlement cycle for US equities. Learn more about the conference, and book your on-site or remote ticket, here.