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Figure 2: Asset Classes Traded 2019 (% of respondents)
95.2 58.1 28.4 12.4 1.9
Equities
Listed Derivatives
of 0.31 – latency, client service
personnel and handling of new
versions/releases – while another
six categories saw an increase of
between 0.2 and 0.27 on last year’s
results. While these scores may
hardly seem ground-breaking in
isolation, the wider trends show a
far more encouraging perspective;
compared to the 2015 iteration of
the EMS survey, half a dozen cat-
egories have increased by as much
as 0.55, indicating that this space
may be one of slower, incremental
advancement rather than experi-
encing a ‘big bang’.
The highest-scoring areas of
performance in this year’s survey
were the reliability and availabili-
ty, and FIX capabilities categories,
which scored 6.18 and 6.12 respec-
tively, while four other categories
were just underneath the 6.0 mark
– latency (5.93), breadth of broker
algorithms (5.96), client service
personnel (5.84) and breadth
of direct connections to venues
(5.85).
One category that has always
been a critical element for EMS
users when reviewing the provid-
ers and systems is product devel-
82 // TheTrade // Fall 2019
Fixed Income
Foreign Exchange
Other
"This space may be one of slower,
incremental advancement rather than
experiencing a big bang."
opment. This has been an area of
underperformance for EMS pro-
viders over the past five years and
although there have been signals
of progress since 2017, it was again
the lowest scoring category in this
year’s results, with 5.39. While this
still represents a ‘good’ score, it is
far below the survey-wide average
of 5.78 and has actually brought
that figure down; without the
product development category,
this year’s survey average would
stand at 5.82. Clearly then the buy-
side expects more from their EMS
providers and will be hoping for
innovation in this space as the oth-
er areas of functionality continue
to improve; those providers that
cannot demonstrate this may find
their clients looking elsewhere.
In terms of the asset classes
traded through these systems,
equities still dominates the survey,
with just over 95% of respondents
trading this product, while there
was a significant drop-off in the
foreign exchange space, down to
just 12.4% of respondents from
34.4% in last year’s survey.
When it comes to the most im-
portant facets of EMS’ for the buy-
side, not much has changed over
the past 12 months. Connectivity
with internal systems and ease of
use remain the most important
features according to this year’s
respondents (46.5% and 70.1%)
respectively, as seen in Figure 3.
Respondents to the survey were
asked to select four important
features of their chosen EMS’, and
alongside the aforementioned fac-
ets, post-implementation of client
service (42.8%) and the number of
connections to different brokers