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Trade settlement: a buyer's guide

What we list in this category, how the field splits between long-established products and newer ones, and the questions worth pressing on before you commit.

Every entry below was recorded from a page we opened, and each carries the source we read. Where we could not establish something it is left blank rather than guessed. Read how this site works if you want the detail.

Long-established products

Recorded as established: in production for many years, usually with a deep reference base and broad coverage. Those are real advantages, and so is the fact that a fifteen-year horizon is easier to argue for a supplier that has already lasted one.

• ALERT — Global database where investment managers, brokers and custodians maintain and share account and standing settlement instruction data. source
• Broadridge Trade Order Management — Multi-asset order management that the vendor positions as spanning both public and private strategies. source
• CTM (Central Trade Manager) — Central matching platform for cross-border and domestic trades across equities, fixed income and repos, with exception management and a Match to Instruct workflow. source
• Control Cloud — Cloud platform that matches financial data across systems and runs exception and investigation workflows for back-office operations. source
• FIS Post Trade Processing Platform — Cloud post-trade platform covering settlement, middle office, accounting, corporate actions and collateral across securities, derivatives and tokenized assets; this is the former Torstone Technology platform, whose site now redirects to FIS. source
• Global Custody Solutions — Custody processing platform with a Global Custody Operations Console that automates settlement and asset servicing for global custodians and the institutional investors they serve. source
• Megara — Modular post-trade suite for custodians, depositories and clearing houses whose modules include corporate actions, settlement, collateral and fund administration. source
• Meritsoft Asset Servicing Claims Management — Post-trade automation for the money side of corporate actions, including asset servicing claims, interest claims, transaction tax and CSDR penalties. source

Newer products

Recorded as modern or emerging. Newer suppliers often offer capability and pricing the incumbents do not, and they carry risks the incumbents do not: fewer references at your size, less operating history, and concentration if they are small. Both belong in the same comparison, on the same fields.

• Anchorage Digital Prime Services — Federally chartered digital asset bank combining qualified custody, trading execution, settlement and staking for asset managers, hedge funds and family offices. source
• BitGo Custody and Prime Services — Regulated digital asset custody paired with a prime offering that ties trading, financing, collateral management and settlement together for institutional holders. source
• Copper Qualified Custody and ClearLoop — Institutional digital asset custody with collateral management, financing and the ClearLoop network for settling against exchanges without moving assets out of custody. source
• Investment Operations Outsourcing (BluePrint) — End-to-end middle and back office operations and trading services on its proprietary BluePrint platform. source
• Limina — Cloud-native portfolio and order management system with a live-extract IBOR, now the front-office layer of Arcesium's front-to-back platform. source
• Marketnode DMI platform — Blockchain-based digital market infrastructure for fund and bond transaction management, covering order management, transfer agency automation and corporate actions; Series A completed 2024 with Euroclear among investors. source
• SSI Automate — Turns manual, non-ALERT standing settlement instructions into an automated extract, validate and enrich process; sister products SSI Validate and SSI Comply feed validated SSIs into DTCC ALERT. source
• Talos — Institutional digital asset trading platform covering order handling, smart order routing, FIX connectivity and portfolio and treasury tools; raised a $40m Series A in 2021 and a $105m Series B in 2022. source

What to ask

These come from the same question bank our request-for-proposal process uses, so a guide and an RFP never drift apart. The four sections below carry the most weight in that bank.

Functional fit

Whether the system does the job for YOUR instruments, markets and volumes — not for the demonstration portfolio. The questions separate what runs in production today from what is on the roadmap, because that distinction disappears in a sales meeting and reappears during implementation. It also asks what still has to be typed in by hand, which every system has and few volunteer.

• Which asset classes does the product support in production today?
• Is there a full audit trail of who changed what and when, and can it be exported?
• Does the system enforce segregation of duties between front and back office?
• Is maker-checker approval supported on material actions, and is it configurable by action type?
• Can a valuation be sourced and approved independently of the people who trade?

Security and resilience

Whether the vendor's security is independently attested or merely asserted. The questions ask for certifications you can read, penetration tests you can see the summary of, and recovery objectives that are written down. Incident history is asked directly, because a vendor that has handled a breach well is often a safer choice than one that has never been tested.

• Which independent attestations do you hold currently?
• Will you provide the most recent report under a non-disclosure agreement?
• Is data encrypted in transit and at rest?
• Is single sign-on supported, and is multi-factor authentication enforced?
• Can your own staff see our data, and is that access logged and reviewable by us?

Commercial terms

Total cost across the whole term, and what happens if you leave. Year one is asked separately from years two to five because year one hides where the money goes. The section asks explicitly what is NOT included, since the gap between the quote and the invoice lives there, and it asks about exit terms while you still have the leverage to negotiate them.

• How is the product priced?
• What is the total first-year cost for our stated requirement, including implementation?
• What is the total annual cost in years two through five?
• What is NOT included in that figure?
• Is there a contractual cap on annual price increases?

Artificial intelligence

If a model touches your data, on what terms. This section exists because the answers differ enormously between vendors and are rarely offered unprompted. It asks whether your data trains models serving other clients, whether you can opt out and keep full function, whether a human reviews output before it affects a book or a client report, and who is liable when a model is wrong. Skip it only if you genuinely do not care.

• Does the product use machine learning or generative AI anywhere in its normal operation?
• Is client data ever used to train models that serve other clients?
• Can we opt out of AI features entirely and keep full product function?
• Does our data leave your infrastructure to reach those providers?
• Is a human review step required before an AI output affects a book, a trade or a client report?

See all 41 products in Trade settlement · Glossary