Sell-Side Technology Awards 2019: Best Sell-Side Trading Network—Refinitiv

Effective connectivity networks function as the veins of the capital markets. They are a crucial component to the industry, especially as marketplaces become increasingly complex with the growing diversification of asset classes, trading venues and institutional participants across global jurisdictions. Refinitiv has long been a leading contender in helping firms to tackle the problems around connectivity and bridging the gap between the sell side and the buy side, particularly through the development of its Autex Trade Route (ATR) FIX-based order-routing network. Refinitiv wins this year’s award for best sell-side trading network at the Sell-Side Technology Awards, reflecting its recent efforts to improve latency and enhance its connectivity capabilities. 

ATR supports equities, futures, options, foreign exchange (FX) and fixed-income orders, and offers millisecond-level connectivity to sell-side firms, boasting one of the largest communities of traders across the capital markets. It provides clients with enhanced visibility and admin controls, including the ability to manage connectivity, in addition to real-time service alerts and order flow metrics. Autex is part of a wider suite of trading technologies provided by Refinitiv for sell-side firms, including its REDI execution management system, a variety of post-trade tools and a community network. 

Michael Chin, managing director and co-head of trading at Refinitiv, explains that the firm is consistently developing the platform to build out its intelligence capabilities, including a rules-based layer of functionality for automating order routing for lower-level trades. Over the last 12 months, Refinitiv has built in additional risk controls, reduced latency and added internalization capabilities to enable clients to self-match trades. For the year ahead, it is looking to continue updating and building out the technology suite; it aims to deliver more advanced analytics and risk metrics that leverage its market data resources. This will enable sell-side clients such as brokers to gain real-time performance analytics to underpin their trading decisions. “Our focus is to deliver more value to our clients that are part of this trading ecosystem, and we want to provide better analytics about the performance of their trades in relation to the market and to their counterparties,” Chin explains. “Today our clients not only want analytics on top of the trades they are doing, but the trades that they are thinking about doing.” 

Refinitiv is currently working with external partners to develop these new capabilities. The first delivery of the latest post-trade analytics is scheduled for the third quarter of this year and the firm is expected to roll out a full front-to-back solution by mid-2020.