Asia Awards - Categories

This award will go to the vendor that has introduced innovation across the functions traditionally associated with the front office (OMS/EMS/portfolio management/algorithmic trading and decision support) over the last 12 months.

This award will go to the vendor that has introduced innovation across the functions traditionally associated with the middle office (risk management/performance measurement and attribution/reporting and compliance) over the last 12 months.

This award will go to the vendor that has introduced innovation across the functions traditionally associated with the back office (reconciliation and clearing and settlement) over the last 12 months.

This award will go to the vendor that has demonstrated innovative use-cases of AI technology (machine learning/natural-language programming/advanced analytics/observational learning/neural networks/robotic process automation etc.) across the capital markets.

This award will go to the data vendor/provider that has helped its clients identify new opportunities by utilizing alternative data. The solution/feed should demonstrate efficiency and effectiveness in exploiting unconventional data types/formats to generate business insight.

This award will go to the data vendor/provider that has helped its capital markets clients comply with ESG-driven mandates/investments, while also offering transparency, accuracy, reliability and flexibility through its datasets/feeds.

Platforms should feature multi-broker/exchange/execution venue connectivity, pre-trade transaction-cost analysis (TCA), algorithmic trading tools and direct market access, and should show strong integration capabilities with OMSs.

This award will go to the best overall market data provider and will take data delivery, coverage and transparency into account.  

This award will go to the best overall reference data provider and will take data delivery, coverage and transparency into account.  

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

Ideally, functions should include repository management (design, storage, archiving, retrieval, distribution of data); a data catalogue; content management (importing and cleansing routines); and business intelligence tools designed to allow users to interrogate data repository.

Entrants (outsourcing providers) should illustrate their ability to provide valuable, cost-effective, and efficient business process outsourcing (BPO) services to clients, primarily across the back office, although appropriate middle- and front-office business processes are also acceptable.

Functions should include ex-post, ex-ante, and Value-at-Risk calculations, “what-if” analysis, stress testing, and Monte Carlo simulations, ideally in as close to real time as possible.

Functions should include incremental credit valuation adjustment calculations, collateral management capabilities, support for a range of external data sources, and compliance with regulatory best practices.

This category focuses on the platforms/tools that allow 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 that they comply with regulatory and client mandates.

The winning platform in the category must illustrate the extent of its KYC/AML/CDD support, providing end-users with increased levels of transparency and accuracy around their KYC/AML/CDD compliance.

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

The winning product in this category must feature exception management, interfaces to widely-used matching engines, and automatic reconciliation of a range instruments (including equities, fixed income, exchange-traded and OTC derivatives).

Judges are looking for a regulatory reporting platform that provides flexibility to support new rules and data formats, the ability to automate manually-intensive workflows, scalability, and an intuitive GUI to help simplify what can be a complex and onerous function for capital markets firms.

The winning TCA solution should support multiple asset classes, a range of benchmarks in its analysis, the ability to assess venues as well as broker performance, and a granular focus on data and its presentation.

Entries should exhibit high levels of buy-side and sell-side penetration, be FIX-compatible, support large messaging volumes, and demonstrate operational reliability/resilience.

This award will go to the best managed data service provider and will take data delivery, data management and breadth and depth of the service into account.  

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.

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

This category is open to any technology vendor, service provider or product/service established or introduced since January 2023. New iterations of existing applications are not considered to be new products, although substantial upgrades that offer new functionality are.

This category seeks to highlight a specific implementation that has gone live between January 2023 and June 2024. The implementation will need to have been completed on time and on budget, and the winning entry will need to explain (in detail) why the implementation is so transformational (for the client) and deserving of this award.

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 (especially to front-office personnel), and interoperability with existing/legacy systems.

This award will go to the analytics tool that is best able to interrogate large, complex datasets in small timeframes in order to produce fast, actionable insights, especially (but not exclusively) for the front office.

The judges are looking for a specific data analytics initiative implemented over the past 12 months that illustrates innovation, transparency and accuracy. 

This award is open to exchanges and buy-side and sell-side firms that can demonstrate the greatest return on investment and operational efficiency through deploying an internal cloud or integrating one or more third-party cloud environments.

This award focuses on global infrastructure deployments on the buy side or the sell side. The judges are looking for innovative strategies that deliver basic infrastructure support across the enterprise, reduce costs, and improve the delivery time of necessary resources to local clients.

This award will go to the AI initiative over the last 12 months that exploits the potentials of machine learning and natural-language processing across the firm’s business/operation units. The panel will look into how much value the technologies have brought to the firm, as well as its scalability and flexibility.

The judges are looking for a specific data management initiative implemented over the last 12 months that solves a specific data management challenge/problem.

This award will go to a firm that has undertaken a truly exceptional IT project or leveraged technology in a new or unique way over the last 12 months that sets it apart from its competitors.