Trading technology vendor Fidessa has launched a new set of tools to help European sell-side firms provide better execution services to their buy-side clients and manage costs more effectively.
The new tools, introduced under the Fidessa Intelligence brand, offer pre-trade, real-time and post-trade analytics and will be primarily targeted at the firm’s small- and medium-sized broking clients. Fidessa says smaller brokers are under more pressure to offer a differentiated service in light of increased market complexity, impending regulatory change and intense competitive pressure.
Fidessa Trader Intelligence, a pre-trade analysis tool that is already offered in the US, is now available in Europe and is designed to help brokers make better sense of data compiled from multiple sources.
“The industry now has to store and process more order and transaction data than ever before,” James Blackburn, director of product marketing for Fidessa’s software-as-a-service business, told theTRADEnews.com. “Using Trader Intelligence, sales traders can capture, filter and organise data in a way that helps them to engage with the buy-side in a more meaningful and targeted way, as well as highlighting new and relevant trading opportunities.”
The Real-Time Intelligence tool will support the sell-side in its pursuit of best execution obligations by letting brokers offer a competitive edge through execution consulting and benchmarking capabilities. The service helps brokers identify when trades are underperforming in the market and make adjustments to trading strategies based on changes to liquidity throughout the lifetime of an order.
Following execution, Blackburn said the Post-Trade Intelligence tool would be particularly useful for firms that outsource execution to third-party brokers, noting a large number Fidessa’s hosted clients are now offloading execution to bulge-bracket firms.
“There is more focus on cost than ever before,” said Blackburn. “It’s a concern for those brokers that outsource execution that they might become disintermediated and perhaps just receive a cheque for their services, and this is the last thing they would want to do. The Post-Trade Intelligence tool makes it possible for these firms to demonstrate positive execution results to clients and regulators.”
The new Intelligence Tools are embedded within Fidessa’s software-as-a-service trading platform as a standard service.