Buy-side Technology Awards - Categories

This category will be awarded to two technology providers/firms that have combined their technologies or services over the course of the last 12 months into an offering that is currently in use at a buy-side firm. The alliance or partnership must have been struck between Q1 2024 and the end of Q2 2025. 

Judges are looking for a provider that offers extensive entity coverage, accuracy, timeliness and transparency around the private markets data it provides the buy side.

Judges are looking for details regarding the various types of alternative data, transparency around the sourcing of that data, and how easily it can be introduced to incumbent portfolio management workflows 

Judges are looking for details regarding entrants’ ESG datasets, including data quality, granularity, and especially ease-of-use with respect to including such datasets within incumbent portfolio management workflows 

Tools must be able to interrogate large data volumes (both structured and unstructured), and produce actionable analysis based on that information discovery, illustrating the business benefits to buy-side user-firms. 

Functions should include repository management (design, storage, archiving, retrieval, distribution of data); content management (importing and cleansing routines); business intelligence tools designed to allow authorized business users to interrogate data repository; creation of reports and manufacture of data sets. 

Judges are looking for details of the managed data service, including responsiveness to client requests, customisability and the various ancillary data management functions that underpin such services.

Functions should include the bulk management of multi-asset portfolios to the same benchmark; OMS and EMS functions; modelling; analytics; compliance; multi-asset class coverage.  

Products entered into this category should include a mix of market and credit risk support, performance and attribution, P&L, collateral management and post-trade processing functions, all within a suite or on a single platform.

Products entered into this category should feature reconciliations, corporate actions processing, accounting, collateral management and cash and liquidity management functions, all within a suite or on a single platform. 

Platforms should feature pre-trade (deal time) and post-trade compliance; support for a range of asset classes including derivatives; a trading blotter; FIX-enabled connectivity; and order generation and routing functions. 

Platforms should feature multi-broker/exchange connectivity; pre-trade transaction cost analysis (TCA); algorithmic trading tools and DMA; and should show strong integration capabilities with OMSs. 

Functions should include a variety of pre-packaged trading algorithms; ability to test strategies; ability to analyze and interpret market events; ease-of-use and easy to understand GUI (this category covers discrete algorithmic trading products and not EMSs).  

The winning entry must explain how the AI technology enhances business processes across the buy side and must provide examples of specific use-cases within buy-side firms.  

Entrants should demonstrate how their investment book of record (IBOR) platform satisfies commonly accepted IBOR criteria/functionality, the tangible business benefits offered by such a platform, and interoperability with existing/legacy systems. 

Functions should include calculation of returns for portfolio (benchmarks and composites); calculation of attribution effects for equity and fixed-income portfolios; and calculation of ex-post risk, absolute and relative. 

The panel is looking for a transaction-cost analysis (TCA) tool or service that supports multiple asset classes, a range of benchmarks in its analysis, the ability to assess venue as well as broker performance, and a granular focus on data and its presentation. 

The winning entry in this category must support buy-side firms’ transparency/analysis functions with respect to the variables/factors that drive portfolio/manager performance.  

Functions should include the ability to support multiple currencies, transactions, and instruments (asset classes); back-office connectivity; flexibility and scalability. 

Functions include the ability to customize report formats and the look and feel of reports for different clients and/or portfolios; automated production of reports; and ability to manage source data and to monitor production status.  

Judges are looking for details regarding the product’s transparency, granularity, ease-of-use, and its market and geographic reach to ensure that user-firms’ KYC obligations are fully supported. 

Judges are looking for the specific regulations supported by entrants products/services, what they believe sets them apart from others similar offerings, and their ease-of-use/intuitiveness from a client’s perspective. 

Judges are looking for details regarding how entrants’ products help buy-side firms comply with regulatory mandates and specific client requirements, while offering auditability, transparency and ease-of use.    

This category focuses on the platforms or tools that allow buy-side firms to monitor their traders’ activities, including executions, communication, market movements and intelligence in real time to ensure that no market abuse has occurred, and they comply with regulatory and client mandates. 

Functions should include risk-based portfolio modelling; ‘what if’ analysis; stress testing; Monte Carlo simulation; and (ideally) the ability to provide VaR and NAV figures. 

Services will be judged on broadness of product coverage; contributing pricing partners; methodology; and specificity to the buy side. 

Products entered into this category should include event diaries, real-time processing of the entire event lifecycle, and support for a wide range of events and messaging standards.

The winning entry in this category should include functionality designed specifically to allow buy-side firms to efficiently manage client relationships that are growing both in terms of numbers and complexity. 

The winning product in this category would need to address the following: exception management, it should provide interfaces to widely-used matching engines, and it should support the automatic reconciliation of a large number of instruments, especially OTC derivatives. 

Entrants (providers) should be able to illustrate their ability to provide valuable, cost-effective and efficient business process outsourcing (BPO) services to the buy side, primarily across the back office, although appropriate middle- and front-office business processes will also be considered. 

This category’s award will go to the dark pool/crossing network provider best able to provide investment managers access to non-listed liquidity with minimal information leakage. 

This category focuses on the underlying trading architecture/network as opposed to the applications running in that environment. Entries should illustrate the broadness of their connectivity, their proximity to market centers and exchanges, and their ability to manage large data/trade volumes without adding unnecessary latency. 

Entrants should be able to demonstrate the ability to provide managed software, infrastructure, or a platform-as-a-service, or combinations of all three, with rapid implementations, flexible consumer models, and high security standards. 

This category seeks to highlight a specific product implementation that has gone live. The winning implementation will need to have been completed on time and on budget; the winning entry will need to explain (in detail) why the implementation is deserving of this award.  

The winning entry in this category must illustrate the extent to which the firm operates in an agile manner through regular sprints, frequent software releases, and close, ongoing collaboration with clients. 

This category is open to any technology vendor, service provider or product/service established or introduced since June 2024. New iterations of existing applications are not considered to be new products, although substantial upgrades that offer new functionality are.