Market Surveillance Systems for Exchanges: A Look at the Leading Products
Abstract
Market surveillance systems have become an integral part of the trading marketplace. The impact of the financial crisis, ensuing increase in regulation, and the fallout from benchmark manipulation have meant that most regulators, exchanges, and large trading firms see trading and communications surveillance as necessary to business continuity and not just another cost to bear.
In the report Market Surveillance Systems for Exchanges: A Look at the Leading Products, Celent analyzes the product offerings of the leading vendors in the market. We are experiencing a change in the way surveillance is conducted within the exchanges and regulators. Having a more comprehensive approach is seen as key to a better trading environment. Modern surveillance systems enable personnel across the firm to undertake different surveillance-related functions simultaneously through the same platform and ensure that there are no anomalies in the trading practices.
The continuing regulatory push for more advanced systems has played an important role in the demand for such systems. The need to improve visualization so that the decision-making processes become simpler for the senior personnel in exchanges and regulators is also crucial. Customization and configurability also requires a great degree of flexibility and ongoing development on part of the vendors. The move toward a more holistic surveillance approach combines other elements of compliance such as best execution with the market surveillance technology. Finally, more elements of machine learning are being incorporated in the current systems, with continuous improvement in the technological capabilities in this regard.
“The deployment requirements of exchanges and regulators are usually more specific than trading participants,” says Dr. Anshuman Jaswal, a senior analyst with Celent’s Securities and Investments practice and author of the report. “Due to the significant requirements, IT capabilities, and resources of these users, in most cases we find that on-site deployment is preferred over a hybrid or cloud solution.”