The TRADE 85 - Q3 2025 | Page 71

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FlexTrade

FlexTrade Systems offers a multi-asset execution management system called FlexTRADER EMS which supports all facets of electronic and algorithmic trading, as well as an all-inclusive order and execution management system- FlexONE OEMS, which features multi-asset, multi-strategy capabilities and includes trading functionalities such as centralised order marking, automatic short locates, crossing, merging and pairs trading. Over the next 12 months, FlexTrade plans to continue to build out functionality of its AI-Assistant, FlexAI™, increase options for bilateral streaming across multiple asset classes and improve its TCA solution, which seamlessly connects with FlexTRADER EMS and FlexONE. FlexTrade received 35 ratings from its buy-side clients this year, ranking the vendor fourth amongst EMS vendors in terms of number of responses.

FlexTrade achieved an overall average score of 5.92 in this year’ s survey, which represents the fourth highest score and the only provider with an improvement from last year with + 0.01. The vendor outperforms the survey average by 0.21 and on a category level, beats the benchmarks in 10 key areas. FlexTrade performed particularly well in product development(+ 0.41) and breadth of direct connections
(+ 0.41). The company’ s top category was breadth of broker algorithms with the highest score of 6.32.
Year-on-year improvements were recorded in a few different functional areas, including ease of integration(+ 0.24) and breadth of asset class coverage(+ 0.23). FlexTrade’ s largest year-on-year decline was in timeliness of updates(-0.23).
Clients responding to FlexTrade were distributed fairly evenly across the major regions; North America( 38 %), UK( 24 %), Europe( 19 %) and APAC( 19 %). Over 70 % of clients were from firms managing more than $ 50 billion in assets.
Sample feedback from respondents included the following:
• More integration of alternative venues and bilateral trading partners
• Deep integration via direct streams from sell-side
• Ability to toggle on / off exposure to venues on the front end of the application
• Pre-trade integration and ease of use
• Deeper integration with venues, better AI agents for TCA and API utilisation
• Fully automatic testing suites for broker changes to improve time to market for broker changes
FLEXTRADE RATINGS FOR EMS PERFORMANCE
Reliability and availability
Latency
Client service personnel
Ease-ofuse
Handling of new versions / releases
Breadth of broker algorithms
Timeliness of updates for broker changes
FIX capabilities
6.12 6.26 5.91 6.04 5.39 6.32 5.63 6.28
Breadth of asset class coverage
Breadth of direct connections to venues
Product development
Ease of integration to internal systems
Overall cost of operation
Average score
5.85 6.26 5.60 5.78 5.56 5.92
KEY STATS Overall Outperformer: Category Outperformer: X10

6.32

Highest score( Breadth of broker algorithms)

5.39

Lowest score( Handling of new versions / releases)

+ 0.24

Most improved( Ease of integration to internal systems)

-0.23

Least improved( Timeliness of updates for broker change)
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