We see a wide range of digital advancements that impact the buy-side, from artificial intelligence to digital asset creation. The ability to adapt and lead will rely on organisations being able to harness a combination of technology and talent in unison. A focus on people, in conjunction with technology, has the possibility to transform workflows, enhance productivity and drive overall growth.

With an undeniable digital transformation upon us, we find a renewed focus on resiliency. This is driven by an overarching business imperative but with increased impetus driven by regulations such as DORA. These regulations emphasise resiliency, prompting businesses to seek solutions that bolster internal operations and ensure the stability of third-party providers. There is increasing scrutiny on outsourcing partners, driven by regulations that prioritise operational resilience and governance.

What do you anticipate will be the main challenges faced by the buy- and sell-side this year?

The main challenge will be to balance opportunity with regulation in a cost-effective manner.  As regulations evolve, businesses must adapt to remain competitive and compliant. This requires a delicate balance: they need to capitalise on opportunities in areas like private credit and alternatives while managing regulatory pressures. The increasing complexity of operations may necessitate greater reliance on third-party services, prompting important questions about their reliability and resilience. Addressing these concerns is essential for maintaining operational integrity and seizing opportunity.

To navigate these evolving regulations, companies must constantly evaluate their technology and operational infrastructures. Regulatory frameworks such as DORA focus on operational resilience and third-party oversight, urging businesses to strengthen their systems accordingly. In Asia and EMEA, customers are adapting to stringent requirements and renewed regulatory reviews, such as those seen with European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) in Europe. As a result, organisations are scrutinising their partnerships more closely, reflecting a growing focus on quality and stability in a complex regulatory landscape.

How do you expect the disparities between UK and EU regulations to change in the coming years?

In recent months, we have seen an unprecedented amount of geopolitical change – this in turn creates a degree of uncertainty in the world of regulatory change. However, even with this backdrop, I anticipate that the UK will continue to make strategic moves to maintain and enhance its global relevance post-Brexit. While this might involve a closer alignment with Europe in some areas, a key priority will be ensuring that the UK remains an attractive hub for issuing securities and facilitating secondary market activities. A prime example of this is the expected transition to a T+1 settlement cycle, which we believe the UK will advance with swiftly. This change promises to be beneficial for the market – we have already witnessed the smooth transition in the US market. We are focusing on helping our clients navigate this shift and the broader move towards shorter settlement cycles globally. This trend is certainly on the radar for both the UK and Europe, and it will continue to be a focus as we look towards 2027.

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However, it is important that increased investment in technology is coupled with a strategy for accessing the best talent. Companies need to hire people with a deep domain knowledge of industry processes, and a solid understanding of how next-gen technologies work. Yet these types of people are going to become even harder to find next year as the competitive race for talent continues. As a result, we expect to see more custodians turning to third-party FinTech providers to access their pools of skilled, experienced personnel as much as they are for the technology itself. 

– Samir Pandiri, president of Broadridge International

We will see an acceleration of desktop consolidation across asset classes, to achieve more efficiencies and oversight. This has become a much more urgent need with the potential long term continuation of remote working. Users will also demand greater access to liquidity and execution quality, aggregated liquidity and enhanced pre- and post trade analytics. Cloud migration will be a major focus for scalability and ease of deployment purposes. The pandemic has taught the industry the importance of being able to work remotely with the right systems. As managers chase alpha, more firms will look to create quantitative trading strategies thereby increasing the need for APIs.

These will need to be smarter than prior and will need to be able to manage complex algos, pairs and gamma trading strategies. There will be a big shift in the way institutions will see crypto in 2022. The asset class will start to form part of traditional asset managers mandates and allocations to crypto assets within their funds will increase. This could potentially create operation headaches that their systems will need to overcome. Electronification of fixed income markets will continue throughout 2022 with more accurate price discovery tools and a wider range of liquidity providers distributing axes and inventory in multiple formats. Outsourcing of trading and other services will accelerate as we move to a new workplace paradigm. Recruitment challenges under the pandemic will increase the need for outsourced trading services, as will the longer-term need for remote working.

– Chris Jenkins, managing director at TORA 

 As the events of the past 18 months have shown, the need for enterprises to have flexible technologies able to handle changes in working environments has accelerated. Employees the world over found themselves displaced from their physical office spaces and thrust into a completely digital workplace, making the shortcomings and damaging repercussions of traditional operating systems and legacy technologies acutely apparent.

What’s more, employee satisfaction today is very much anchored in being provided with the right apps and technology tools within daily workflows. In 2022 expect to see a “new normal” evolve – which will see a move away from cluttered desktops, disjointed communication and disordered workflows across enterprises. Instead, the focus will be on having access to a set of tools designed to empower productivity and deliver exceptional employee experiences. Business leaders recognise that the future of work is changing. We are excited to be part of defining the path, accelerating employees towards a hyper-personalised experience.

– Adam Toms, European CEO, OpenFin

Next year will see attitudes toward front-office innovation change as it becomes increasingly clear that technology is not a cost centre but a revenue generator. Firms need to take control of their technology to differentiate and compete in the long-term. This shift in approach will drive two key themes.

The first is the increased focus on technological intensity, where institutions reduce their reliance on vendors to build their own technology to enable them to differentiate and compete. This changing approach to trading technology will drive institutions to move away from ‘off-the-peg’ technology, which is no longer enough to differentiate as they transition to taking front-office innovation into their own hands.

The second is the front office’s shift to the cloud. While the back and middle-office’s migration to the cloud is well established, the front-office has been slower to make the leap. Attitudes are changing however, and businesses are realising that the cloud is secure, powerful and gives firms easy access to rich data and analytics. We can expect to see front office infrastructure increasingly moving to the cloud, as it becomes the centre of a new financial ecosystem that will become increasingly integral to institutions’ operations.

– Matt Barrett, CEO of Adaptive Financial Consulting

Over the past couple of years, initiatives such as FDC3 have made great strides to solve the challenges associated with delivering actionable intelligence and workflow focus to the desktops of trading teams. These open standards reduce the friction of data movement and application interoperability to increase speed, quality and efficiency of trading-decision making.

With proven solutions to plumb data increasingly commonplace, the next 12 months will inevitably see software vendor focus free up from solving aggregation and connectivity issues to delivering value-adding innovation. Consequently, previously tied up resources will be allocated to developing and providing cutting-edge new technology that dramatically pushes workflows forward. In 2022, those who move ahead of the pack and differentiate will be the firms working closely with clients to understand their current needs and future requirements. As a result, they will optimise their thinking and technology around the user and experience rather than grappling with customising legacy workflows. Augmenting traders with automation and alerting, driven by actionable intelligence, represents the next generation of front-office technology.

 – Andy Mahoney, managing director, FlexTrade EMEA

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Broadridge Financial Solutions has created a new business to head its international expansion across all business lines in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.

Known as Broadridge International, the formation of the new business aims to build on the company’s long-term commitment to clients globally.

Tom Carey, president of technology and operations at Broadridge, has been appointed to head up Broadridge International.

He has contributed heavily to the growth of Broadridge’s next generation, global post-trade service and led several of its key acquisitions as the company expanded its portfolio.    

Tim Gokey, chief operating officer at Broadridge, referenced Carey’s strong track record of building technology platforms and client relationships as being key to driving further growth with the new business.

“He will be focused on helping our clients transform to meet the growing regulatory, economic and convergence challenges and complexities of the global markets,” Gokey added.

In his expanded role, Carey will also work closely alongside the governance and communications teams led by Patricia Rosch, head of Broadridge investor communication solutions, outside of North America.

Rosch commented the new arrangement “will enable us to take our current and next generation of products directly to market in EMEA and APAC in the most effective manner to meet clients’ growing needs”.

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