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E X E C U T I O N
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S Y S T E M S ]
Execution
moves onwards
and upwards
The 2019 edition of The TRADE’s Execution Management
Systems survey finds the space in rude health as
execution quality continues to increase.
I
n the 2018 edition of The
TRADE’s Execution Manage-
ment Systems (EMS) survey, com-
pliance with the recent MiFID II
rules was fast becoming a thing
of the past, as providers and users
year found that the buy-side had
spent around $1.4 billion on the
deployment of EMS and order
management systems in 2018, with
the most recognisable names in
the space leading the way in terms
"There are signs that some providers may be
resting on their laurels, falling behind the
high standards their peers have set in this
year's survey."
alike turned their attention back
towards the real business at hand:
improving the quality of execu-
tion.
Research conducted by the
consultancy Greenwich Associ-
ates and published in March this
80 // TheTrade // Fall 2019
of popularity. Given the amount
the asset management community
is now spending on these systems,
the results of this year’s survey
will be pleasing to providers, as
scores continue to rise as the
industry moves further away from
the compliance-focused days of
two years ago when MiFID II
came into play. However, there
are signs that some providers may
be resting on their laurels, falling
behind the high standards their
peers have set in this year’s survey.
Figure 1 shows the scores re-
corded over the past three years
across 13 functional EMS cate-
gories under review by buy-side
respondents. Overall, scores con-
tinued to rise in this year’s survey,
with all categories under scrutiny
scoring above 5.00 (representing
a ‘good’, or ’default’, score), while
two categories exceeded the 6.00
mark. The overall survey average
score also rose in this year’s edi-
tion to 5.78, a 0.22 increase on last
year, and the highest score for at
least the past seven years.
Every area of service ranked