Buy-Side Technology Awards 2014: Best Buy-Side OMS—Bloomberg

One of Bloomberg’s greatest strengths is its ability to handle and disseminate data. In the OMS space, firms can get mired in the tedious and difficult tasks of configuring, testing and validating data-enrichment routines. As a winner of the integrated front-office platform award, AIM is geared to consolidate multiple systems to create a complete view of data and orders. On the customization front, the OMS offers over 1,000 user-defined fields, while data from any provider can be added into the system.

Bloomberg also helped set itself apart from the competition by addressing regulatory challenges. As compliance becomes a greater burden for the buy side, OMSs need to help firms in this daunting endeavor. The AIM OMS provides real-time compliance checks throughout the trade lifecycle—pre-trade, post-trade and end-of-day. A violations blotter captures any trade violations, which eases the burden on compliance officers as they approve or reject alerts. Position-based exceptions can be reviewed in Bloomberg or captured in presentation-ready Crystal reports.

AIM is also integrated with the Bloomberg execution management system (EMS), which is in line with a growing trend across the buy side for tighter integration and communication between order management and execution management systems. AIM connects to over 3,000 broker destinations and supports voice trading through its VCON offering. 

It’s hard to deny Bloomberg’s scale and support, given that Bloomberg is the industry’s largest data provider, while AIM’s integration offers decision support for portfolio management; electronic trading and execution; post-trade matching, settlement, reconciliation, and performance measurement; and data aggregation and reporting. When you add those functions to Bloomberg’s compliance capabilities, it’s easy to understand how AIM OMS has set itself apart from its competitors.

As compliance becomes a greater burden for the buy side, OMSs need to help firms in this daunting endeavor. The AIM OMS provides real-time compliance checks throughout the trade lifecycle—pre-trade, post-trade and end-of-day.