Global asset management is scaling at speed – with AUM nearly doubling to $128 trillion in just a decade. But sustaining that growth means more than just keeping up. Trading desks must deliver best execution, safeguard oversight and maximise efficiency at scale.
That requires rethinking the desk not in terms of headcount, but of structure. The firms that succeed will embed automation, credit solutions and data-driven execution into everyday workflows – giving traders the bandwidth to manage rising volumes without sacrificing performance.
Scaling without headcount
At its core, the buy-side trading desk faces a resource problem. As portfolios expand globally, FX orders flow naturally from underlying investment activity across assets classes. These orders are often operational – they carry no alpha, yet they are critical for trade settlement, risk management and performance reporting. Traders are under pressure to process more of these orders, across more markets, with the same or even fewer resources.
Adding headcount is rarely the solution. Costs are under pressure, regulatory requirements are rising and chief information officers expect trading to deliver efficiencies, not inflate budgets. The desk must therefore find scale through technology and smarter workflows, not manpower.
Automation meets best execution
The obvious lever is automation. But automation alone is not enough. A simple “set and forget” process risks eroding execution quality and introducing hidden costs. The real opportunity is in automation that strengthens best execution.
Take smart order routing. Rather than blasting an Request for Quotation (RFQ) to 20 banks – creating information leakage and muddying price discovery – desks can use data to identify the top five most relevant counterparties for a given trade based on historical performance, currency pair and trade size. This not only improves pricing outcomes but also reduces the operational burden of managing multiple relationships.
Algorithmic trading, too, is moving beyond equities into FX, swaps and NDFs. Algos allow desks to execute in full size, minimise market impact and demonstrate to internal and external stakeholders that execution was systematic, auditable and defensible. What was once an “equities-only” toolset is becoming central to the buy-side’s FX strategy.
The buy-side also has an opportunity to rethink credit constraints. Too often, best execution is compromised because a given fund lacks bilateral credit with the counterparty offering the best price. Credit intermediation models – where a third party stands in to enable the trade – remove this bottleneck and keep trades within a controlled ecosystem. For the buy-side, this means accessing broader liquidity without reengineering account structures or sacrificing governance, while improving credit exposure management.
Workflow-native solutions
Yet the true frontier is not a single tool – it is workflow-native integration. For traders, the order management system (OMS) and execution management system (EMS) are the cockpit. If automation lives outside those systems, it creates new frictions, new risks and ultimately undermines efficiency gains.
The future of the trading desk is one where OMS/EMS platforms are tightly integrated with credit intermediation, algorithmic execution and smart order routing – embedded directly in the workflows traders already use. This is how you eliminate low-value manual tasks, cut operational risk and free traders to focus on high-value, data-driven decision-making.
For example, an order kicked off by a portfolio manager in an OMS should seamlessly trigger routing logic that identifies the right counterparties, apply the appropriate execution style and manage settlement through established credit channels – all without the trader rekeying, reconciling or chasing down exceptions. The trader’s role becomes supervisory: ensuring quality, monitoring exceptions and applying judgment where human discretion adds real value.
A forward-looking desk
The trading desk of the future is not bigger; it is smarter. It is defined by the ability to scale operationally without sacrificing oversight. It harnesses automation to deliver not just efficiency, but demonstrably better execution. And it integrates solutions directly into workflows, ensuring traders can do more with less while maintaining the transparency and auditability regulators demand.
We are entering a period where AUM growth will continue to outpace headcount growth. That is not a temporary imbalance – it is the new normal. The firms that thrive will be those that embrace structural change in how trading is done, not just incremental improvements.
For trading professionals, automation is not a threat to their jobs. It is an opportunity to evolve the desk into a true hub of value creation – one that balances efficiency, performance and oversight at scale.