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to say EMS providers aren ’ t out of the woods yet , as this year ’ s scores place them just about even with the results from 2021 . Although this year ’ s results are encouraging for EMS vendors , respondents note there is still room for improvement . As competition between providers remains fierce , being able to differentiate one solution from others will become increasingly important . As expected , this year ’ s iteration of The TRADE ’ s EMS Survey reaffirmed the momentum of traders requesting additional asset class capabilities from their EMS as markets such as fixed income continue to modernise and evolve towards electronic trading workflows . In addition , buy-side respondents continued to express frustration with the complexity involved with integrating external solutions into their existing internal ecosystems .
Despite this year ’ s product gains , as the industry wide momentum and use cases for AI expand , opportunities for competitive differentiation are emerging . As buy-side firms look to integrate AI into front-office capabilities , they will look to core solutions providers to create the platforms and capabilities to transform the front-office . Many of the providers profiled have already taken significant steps to embed AI and other automation into their solutions . While bespoke adoption on a broader sense may be slower than expected , capabilities embedded in core solutions and adopted more broadly by peers will see faster adoption . We are also excited to see how the growth in fixed income EMS ’ in 2022-2023 will begin to impact survey results in the coming year .
This year , nine EMS vendor firms received sufficient responses from buy-side users to warrant a profile in the survey : Bloomberg EMS , Charles River a State Street Company , FlexTrade , Instinet Newport , Neovest , FactSet ’ s Portware , TORA , TS Imagine TradeSmart and Virtu Triton . Among the profiled vendors , six outperformed the overall survey average of 5.94 : FlexTrade , Instinet Newport , Neovest , TORA , TS Imagine TradeSmart and Virtu Triton .
Methodology Survey respondents were asked to provide a rating for each execution management system ( EMS ) provider on a numerical scale from 1.0 ( very weak ) through to 7.0 ( excellent ), covering 13 functional criteria . In general , 5.0 ( good ) represents the ‘ default ’ score of respondents . In total , 332 individuals responded ; 512 evaluations were submitted ; and more than 20 providers were evaluated . All evaluations were used to compile the overall market review information as well as provider profiles covering the major EMS providers based on responses received . Each evaluation was weighted according to three characteristics of the respondent ; the value of assets under management ; the scale of business being conducted electronically ; and the number of different providers being used . In this way , the evaluations of the largest and broadest EMS users were weighted at up to twice the weight of the smallest and least experienced respondent . In arriving at any overall calculations , the scores received in respect of each of the 13 functional categories were further weighted according to the importance attached to them by survey respondents . The aim is to ensure that in assessing service provision the greatest impact results from the scores received from the most sophisticated users in the areas they regard as the most important . Finally , it should be noted that responses provided by affiliated entities have been discarded and that other responses , where respondents were unable to be properly verified , were also excluded . We hope that readers find this approach both informative and useful as they assess different capabilities in the future . This year ’ s analysis for the EMS survey has been carried out by Datos Insights ( formerly Aite- Novarica Group ).
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