Buyer’s Guide: Buyside FX E-trading Solutions 2021

Since FX e-trading systems were pioneered for use by financial markets trading businesses in e-manual, high-touch form in the early 2000s, offerings specialised for buyside firm usage were always a mixed bag of functional capabilities. Fast forward to 2021, and a wealth of fund manager- and portfolio manager-specialised FX order and execution management systems are available from every major technology vendor as well as from a collection of smaller providers.

However, the extent to which any of these off-the-shelf solutions fulfil the complex matrix of active and passive currencies flow management and trading needs contained within the largest institutional investors through to the smallest investment managers or wealth managers remains in question.

This report found that, while great strides were achieved in trade process and workflow automation since the early 2000s, there remain some meaningful gaps in functional capabilities sophistication that must be addressed to ensure their continued relevancy to an ever-more nimble community of long-only institutional investors, their asset and investment management cohorts, and to end-investor brokers.

This report reviews the functional capabilities of: