[ S U R V E Y | E X E C U T I O N M A N A G E M E N T S Y S T E M S ]
dabble in more non-equity asset classes and expand into global markets, adoption of OEMS solutions has increased as well as the need to leverage more than one EMS to meet their daily trading needs. Figure 4 shows that while the majority( 55 %) of respondents noted using only one EMS, the percentage of firms using a single EMS dropped 10 % from 2024. Instead, those firms using two EMS solutions increased by 9 %, representing a significant portion of the respondent pool at 32 %.
Following the trend of past surveys, Figure 5 shows that those firms with higher AUM will tend to use a greater number of EMS solutions compared with their smaller counterparts though the gap appears to be shrinking every year. For this year’ s survey, firms with between $ 10 billion and $ 50 billion had the highest average at 1.77 EMS solutions whereas those firms with between $ 0.5 billion and $ 1 billion showed the lowest average at 1.35.
When examining the asset classes commonly traded on EMS platforms, not surprisingly, respondents showed the strongest
Figure 4. Number of providers used(% of respondents) |
Provider count |
2025 |
2024 |
2023 |
1 |
55 |
65 |
60 |
2 |
32 |
23 |
31 |
3 |
11 |
10 |
7 |
4 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
5 + |
0 |
0 |
1 |
Figure 5. Average number of providers by AuM Total assets( USD billions) |
2025 |
2024 |
2023 |
Up to 0.5 |
1.52 |
1.38 |
1.32 |
0.5-1 |
1.35 |
1.50 |
1.47 |
1-10 |
1.50 |
1.32 |
1.45 |
10-50 |
1.77 |
1.48 |
1.50 |
More than 50 |
1.66 |
1.59 |
1.62 |
preference for equities at 91 % which has not changed at all from the 2024 survey. The more interesting result was the fact that the survey indicated an increase in all other asset classes outside of cash equities. The robust adoption of EMS in trading ETF continues at 68 %, which was a 2 % increase from the previous year. Listed derivatives were not too far behind at 64 %, followed by FX at 52 % and fixed income at 49 %. Perhaps following the growing trend of cryptocurrencies hitting the institutional market, 7 % of respondents mentioned trading crypto. Overall, the percentage of non-equities assets traded electronically has increased 1.8- fold since 2023.
Respondents to this year’ s survey have a near identical geographic distribution to prior years( Figure 7). Just under half of all respondents are based in North America( 48 %), while the remainder was split between
Figure 6. Asset classes traded(% of respondents)
91 68 64 52 49 7
Equities |
ETFs |
Listed Derivatives |
Foreign Exchange |
Fixed Income |
Crypto |
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