In 2017, the global equities brokerage business is consolidated into a handful of Tier 1 US investment banks, where incumbent third-party OMS and EMS offerings are entrenched. The consolidation of the cash equities market could have seen cash equities OMS/EMS vendors cannibalise one another in an attempt to increase their share of a diminishing customer base, yet in 2017, vendors have expanded their horizons and are broadening the coverage of their cash equities products to include additional asset classes. This allows banks to push the consolidated flow from multiple asset classes through one OMS/EMS platform, hence reducing the overheads generated by having more than one managed service or, in the case of banks operating in-house systems, by having to maintain an internal knowledge base that covers more than one platform. The result of this meeting of minds in vendor-side strategic thinking and sellside requirements may yet drive up levels of vendor churn in the markets, creating further opportunity for growth in market share, and increasing choice and the potential to negotiate prices downward for banks.
The report covers eleven functionality areas that GreySpark feels are key to the usability and effectiveness of cash equities OMS and EMS:
- System integration
- Graphical user interface (GUI)
- Security
- Pre-trade processing
- Order management and routing
- Market data
- Market connectivity
- Trading functionality
- Client straight-through-processing (STP)
- Post trade functionality
- Compliance and reporting
