THETRADETECH DAILY THE OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF TRADETECH 2021
ED WICKS : change on the horizon
Ed Wicks , global head of trading at Legal & General Investment Management , gives his thoughts on some of the hottest topics discussed at TradeTech Europe this year , including remote working , automation and outsourced trading .
How has Legal & General Investment Management ( LGIM ) adapted itself to remote trading and do you expect to implement a working from home hybrid form of desk ? We coped very well throughout 2020 . If I look back on the full year across all asset classes , we were able to support an increase in volume across our global trading desks of 20 %. The ability to support that level of growth of activity with remote working conditions was a real testament to the strength of the processes we put in place .
It is pretty clear that some level of flexibility for our traders will remain . We are currently going through the process of surveying our staff and trying to build a picture of how they want to work in the future . Once we have collected that information we will make a plan of action . We have proven that we can trade safely , efficiently and effectively from home . There are different jobs on trading desks . For example , at LGIM the team comprises both traders and quantitative analysts , and clearly the role will to some extent dictate how flexible the working pattern might be .
One of the things we are looking at is how we continue to fit out our offices with the appropriate technology , it sounds obvious , but you can ’ t go into a meeting room if you ’ ve got half of the staff working remotely and half working in the office . You need to have appropriate technology and AV equipment in place to make that experience as seamless as possible .
What new technologies do you expect could disrupt institutional equities trading in the next few years ? Improvements are long overdue in the
“ I don ’ t think we can just talk about diversity and inclusion in general terms . It is helpful to frame the debate in a more granular fashion .” initial public offering ( IPO ) and secondary workflows . This topic is gaining traction on the buy-side at the moment and I ’ m confident in the next few years we will have better solutions in place to enable us to have a much more STP environment for new issues across both equities and bonds .
The area is ripe for further development and any technology in that space would be welcomed by the buy-side . My own trading desk , and also those of my peers at other large buy-side firms , are managing more automated workflows through order management systems ( OMS ) and execution management systems ( EMS ), and subsequently more analytics and advanced data sets will be required for enhanced decision support and for monitoring purposes .
What market structure changes have most impacted trader workflows in the past year ? Changes to trading obligations that came into force post-Brexit at the beginning of this year were significant . Both the share trading obligation and the derivatives trading obligation . The derivative trading obligation had a meaningful impact on trading workflows , even taking into account the FCA ’ s use of temporary transitional power .
You could say quite logically that the bigger changes to market structure are actually ahead of us . We have heard recently the initial proposals from the Chancellor in the UK on the removal of the share trading obligation , and we are looking forward to the upcoming consultations over the summer . The more interesting changes are on the horizon .
22 THETRADETECH DAILY