In seeking to create opportunities within CIB front-office and risk management business lines, vendor-provided buy-and-build trade automation solutions are built to aid institutions in the design of trading technology and to enhance the utilisation of their historical stores of trading franchise IP.
Buy-and-build trade automation solutions thus present an intriguing option for technology buyers to quickly deploy a fully functional system that retains the ability of users to customise its software with desk-specific IP such as algorithmic trading strategies, for example.
To elucidate the differentiating factors between the three sellside buy-and-build trade automation solutions surveyed for this report, a detailed analysis of the KPCs of all the solutions is presented individually per solution in this report. The analysis incorporates data points garnered for each technology vendor that enabled GreySpark to draw out the strengths and weaknesses across the surveyed solutions set.
For the purposes of this report, the selected solutions and their users were researched and surveyed by GreySpark analysts across:
- Four KPCs – Comprised of a mixture of functional and non-functional categories; and
- Five KPIs – Each one of which is comprised of a synthesised set of functional and non-functional attributes designed to allow for a proprietary assessment of the ‘fullness’ of each of the assessed KPCs per each of the researched and surveyed vendor solutions.
The findings of the analysis support GreySpark’s belief that, in 2023, buy-and-build trade automation solution competitive differentiation for sellside institution users is defined by:
- Adaptability & Flexibility – Specifically, customisation, system integration, development APIs and integration with market infrastructure / utilities;
- Functional & Non-Functional Technological Performance – The ability to engineer trade automation apps and integrate data from various sources in a UI to a high standard;
- Reliability & Assurance of Data Integrity – The ability to ensure a consistently smooth performance under variable demands, and to maintain a ‘single source of truth; and
- Total Cost of Ownership – Specifically, Capex, Opex, maintenance and professional services.
This report, then, reviews the findings of a survey of the following buy-and-build automation solutions:
- Broadridge Financial Solutions;
- Genesis Global Technology; and
- Horizon Software.
