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E X E C U T I O N
mic Trading survey this year, the
buy-side is indicating that they are
seeking technology that does not
require a technologist mindset to
operate and highly value systems
that can be slotted into their pro-
cesses as smoothly as possible.
The ongoing consolidation of
EMS providers among the buy-
side continues apace, as shown in
Figure 4, as asset managers persist
in slimming down the number of
relationships they hold with these
providers. Just under 63% of buy-
side respondents said this year
that they are using a single EMS
provider, a far cry from the results
of 2017, where just over one-third
of respondents were using one
provider. It would now be reason-
able to assume the 2017 result was
an anomaly, likely driven by the
introduction of MiFID II, when
asset managers were sampling
their options in the space before
making a definitive decision on
which EMS provider they would
use going forward.
There have been decreases in the
level of firms using two or three
providers to offset the increase in
M A N A G E M E N T
S Y S T E M S ]
"While many areas of functionality
covered by the survey have scored highly,
it would be unreasonable to expect this
trend to continue unbridled in future."
those with a single provider, and
marginal increases for those using
four or more EMS providers, but
this larger end of the scale is the
reserve of those on the buy-side
with significant resources and
complex trading strategies that
necessitate a variety of systems
or those designed to suit niche
activities.
Leading on from this, Figure
5 shows little change from last
year’s results when examining
the average number of provid-
ers when split by the AuM size
of respondents, although there
continues to be a reduction in the
number of providers adopted by
firms in the upper AuM brackets,
down from 2.38 in 2017 to 1.81 this
year. When asked if they had plans
Figure 4: Number of Providers Used
to implement additional EMS
providers to their existing set-up,
over 70% of respondents an-
swered that they had no plans to
do so, while just five respondents
were able to name which provider
they planned to onboard in future.
Similarly, 70% of respondents said
that they had no plans to change
which EMS provider they were
currently using.
When it comes to evaluat-
ing EMS providers, eight firms
garnered enough responses from
buy-side users to warrant a pro-
file, with some big industry hitters
— such as REDI and SS&C —
noticeably absent from the list due
to insufficient levels of responses.
Most interestingly in the profiled
providers was the contrasting
(% of Respondents)
2.2
1.3
30.0
34.0
36.0
2017
55.9
2018
15.1
8.8
1.5
Number of providers
1
2
3
4
5
84 // TheTrade // Fall 2019
25.9
62.9
10.7
6.1
7.8
1.9
2019