Generative artificial intelligence (gen A.I.) has made a big splash in the securities industry and many firms and providers are exploring how to apply this game-changing technology to data, analytics, accounting, databases, cloud services, modeling, and operations for wealth and asset management, investment banking, and securities transactions. Industry participants are also applying gen A.I. to unstructured data, client engagements, corporate actions, and manual tasks and systems. The winner in this category must demonstrate how its gen A.I. solution greatly improved a key operation for financial institutions or led to a breakthrough.
The winner in this category will be a provider of alternative data feeds and data from unconventional sources. The provider must demonstrate excellence in meeting the non-mainstream, unstructured data needs of financial services firms including hedge funds, pension funds, and mutual funds. The types of data that fit into this category encompass information offerings for cutting-edge derivatives, ESG-based investment strategies, voluntary carbon credit (VCC) investing, social media interactions, satellite imagery, and digital asset transactions.
Optimizing collateral management has come into sharp focus for many buy-side firms especially as they have had to revamp their infrastructures to meet new regulatory regimes. Advances via distributed ledger technology (DLT) and artificial intelligence (A.I.) are easing workflows and compliance burdens. This award honors the provider, consultant, or internal IT organization that has been the most effective in helping buy-side operations staff achieve higher levels of internal efficiency in the oversight of collateral.
This award honors the provider that delivers an outstanding suite of securities operations solutions tailored for buy-side institutions — including asset managers, investment firms, wealth funds, insurance firms, and pension funds and other asset owners. Solutions may be deployed on-premise, in the cloud, fully outsourced, or delivered via a hybrid model, and should support firms navigating increasingly complex portfolios, regulatory environments, and data ecosystems. The award is meant to reward the provider whose ambitious, enterprise-wide offerings have exceeded expectations.
This award celebrates the provider that has streamlined the complexity and improved the process of client reporting. The winner will demonstrate that it has improved the customization, look, and feel, and delivery of reports for many kinds of clients and portfolios. The award also recognizes progress in automating reports, managing source data, monitoring the status of productions, and clarity in performance reporting. Innovative uses of AI technologies will be taken into consideration.
This award category focuses on the next chapter in cloud computing – cloud-native advances that are paving the way for digital transformations and other evolutionary strategies. This category is open to managed service and cloud-native solutions providers, and to companies that offer infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS); platform-as-as-service (PaaS); and software-as-a-service (SaaS) implementations.
This award is for the solution that delivers a distinguished offering in a specialized area, designed to help meet a critical compliance need. The winning supplier must demonstrate an ability to keep pace with an evolving industry and show a level of achievement in improving their clients’ needs to meet obligations and optimize their operations. Solutions eligible for nomination can be from any niche area of compliance for equities, fixed income, and derivative instruments. In addition, solutions that focus on relevant aspects of regulatory, legal, data, social, and IT compliance are also eligible.
Corporate actions processing is on a new evolutionary path as firms make greater demands for speed, accuracy, and resiliency. This award spotlights the provider that has incorporated industry standards, advanced automation, intelligent data management, ESG data, and applied emerging technologies such as AI and machine learning to transform corporate actions workflows. Nominees should demonstrate how their solution helps clients reduce risk, minimize manual intervention, and accelerates decision-making via AI-driven insights, predictive processing, or exception handling playing key roles. The winner in this category will have helped its clients move closer to fully automated, straight through processing, and real-time responsiveness, even amid growing event complexity and data fragmentation.
This award shines the spotlight on the provider that has achieved a new level of modernization via a financial technology solution for middle- and back-office post-trade operations. Eligible areas of consideration include intelligent automation, real-time processing, distributed ledger technology, predictive analytics, and other emerging technologies that push the boundaries of what's possible in securities operations. The winner will demonstrate that its pioneering solution represents a genuine leap forward—eliminating manual processes, driving unprecedented efficiency, or solving problems in entirely new ways.
Managing data across sources, formats, and asset classes to get the most out of it for securities operations is an ongoing challenge for all financial services firms. Data that is optimized will yield multiple benefits for securities operations and beyond. This award honors the provider that has demonstrated it can help firms organize, manage, and leverage their multiple data sources to optimize their value and pave the way for greater advancements to come.
This award salutes the provider that delivers comprehensive, accurate, and timely original data to support securities operations. The winner serves as a primary source for market data, reference data, pricing, corporate actions, indices, and other essential data sets. The top provider in this category offers broad global coverage, seamless access across asset classes, and a user-friendly experience that reduces operational risk and enables clients to make confident decisions.
Disruptive technologies are new realities for financial services firms participating in securities markets. Distributed ledgers, A.I.-based solutions such as machine learning and natural language advances, big data projects, open-source efforts, application programming interface (API) links, and quantum computing are solving old problems in a new more complete way and becoming part of the post-trade IT landscape. This award highlights the solution that helps firms leap forward in their technology journeys rather than make incremental changes that maintain the status quo.
This award commends the provider that has achieved operational breakthroughs for essential clearing and settlement operations. Eligible areas for consideration are trade matching and confirmation, settlement processing, fails management, cross-border settlement, T+1 optimization, real-time settlement capabilities, and clearing and settlement initiatives for digital assets. The winner will demonstrate how its solution helps firms achieve greater speed, accuracy, and efficiency in completing transactions across markets and asset classes.
The middle office plays an important role in optimizing securities operations across the trading enterprise. The winner in this category will be chosen from the ranks of middle-office operations providers that offer IT resource management services, risk management, risk data analytics, client and security master database support, and services for the coding, configuration, and verification of transactions.
The middle and back-offices are no longer autonomous groups existing independently of each other. They are linked by multiple operations serving multiple assets, which would be hurt by a siloed approach. This award will spotlight the Ops offering that helps firm facilitate more efficient integration between middle- and back-office applications, particularly IT innovations that eliminate manual systems, legacy solutions and pave the way for operational efficiency.
Operational risk permeates everything that a financial services firm does, including securities trading and all the steps needed to complete a transaction. This award will reward the provider that has shown the most creativity in mitigating operational risk whether it is related to onboarding and KYC challenges, reputational concerns, margining and collateral management woes, data mismanagement, disaster recovery/business continuity, corporate governance, and other issues that may hamper operations.
Outsourcing plays a key role for many facets of securities operations. This category honors the provider that offers valuable, reliable, cost-effective and efficient outsourced services to the buy side. The winner in this category will be honored for offering the highest levels of reliability, security and adaptability, and for demonstrating capabilities for rapid implementations and flexible consumer models.
This award celebrates the provider with a proven record of offering optimal performance measurement capabilities that help firms evaluate and communicate investment results. Eligible solutions have made advances in returns calculation, portfolio and composite performance, attribution analysis for equity and fixed-income portfolios, benchmark comparisons, ex-post risk measurement, or GIPS compliance. The winner will exemplify how a provider helps clients achieve accuracy, efficiency, and clarity in measuring and reporting performance.
This category is open to established providers that have released a brand-new offering, or achieved a breakthrough, major overhaul, or completed significant advances for an existing offering that provides an unprecedented advantage to clients. The new functions can include greater integration via new application programming interfaces (APIs) and new features that facilitate greater system performance and other new benefits for securities operations.
This award recognizes the provider delivering specialized expertise and customized support for capital markets firms. Eligible services include technology implementation, operational consulting, systems integration, data strategy, quantitative development, or staff augmentation across traditional and alternative asset classes. The winner will demonstrate how its tailored approach helps clients solve complex challenges and achieve measurable results.
This award recognizes the provider delivering innovative reconciliation capabilities for securities operations. Eligible solutions may address cash, position, transaction, or inter-system reconciliation across traditional and digital assets. Solutions leveraging AI, machine learning, or automation to accelerate exception management and reduce manual effort are encouraged to apply. The winner will demonstrate how its solution helps firms achieve accuracy, efficiency, and scalability in their reconciliation processes.
Once firms have optimized their internal compliance ecosystems, they often need the support of regulatory technology providers. The RegTech providers considered for this category have demonstrated that they can help firms efficiently meet the external reporting and other demands of regulators, anti-money laundering requirements, and the latest domestic and international economic sanctions of governmental authorities. Suppliers that help participants with compliance in the listed, over-the-counter (OTC), and non-cleared derivatives markets are also eligible for this honor.
Keeping up with regulatory reporting requirements is an ongoing burden for financial services firms that is only going to become more challenging. Automating processes across an enterprise is daunting for firms, and the industry is exploring a variety of models to support regulatory technology (RegTech). The surge in ESG-based investing has also created a new area of concern for firms that need to prove to investors they are not engaged in greenwashing. This award honors the solutions provider that has made a commitment to advancing data integrity and data governance, ending repetitive processes, and streamlining reporting across the enterprise and to regulators.
The collateral management complex involves many participants including sell-side firms that must work closely in conjunction with counterparties. This award recognizes the accomplishments of a provider, consultancy, industry organization, or internal IT group that has made great strides in helping sell-side operations maximize their collateral management operations via advances to the workflow, IT systems, and counterparty interactions.
North American firms have been using a variety of third-party solutions and/or services as they transition their securities operations to shorter, trading day plus one (T+1) settlement cycles. This award will bring the focus to the third-party provider that securities firms have found to be the best at helping them on the road to T+1. The winning solution will have helped firms manage the key challenges inherent in the shift to T+1 and the after-effects of such a move.
Financial crimes against financial institutions are on the rise and firms are in battle array on many fronts. To help firms fight back, providers have been advancing surveillance solutions to uncover evidence of internal and external acts of fraud, insider trading, sanctions violations, terrorist financing, and complex forms of financial corruption. This award will spotlight software, services, systems, and advances in surveillance and recovery that help firms protect themselves from danger and reputational damage.
The move to shorter, trading day plus one (T+1) settlement has many moving parts and will cause an overhaul of securities operations as we know them. One of the key elements of a successful transition to T+1 settlement will likely include the guidance of a consultancy, advisory, or professional services firm. This award will spotlight the exceptional service offering that helped securities firms cross the line to T+1 settlement.
This award will recognize a behind-the-scenes individual who has been highly effective in advancing a major financial technology issue impacting the industry. The person to be honored has devoted much time and effort toward proliferating a new standard, a key technology initiative, a regulatory-related project or a technology breakthrough that benefits the industry. The winner in this category must show that he or she can work across the aisle with business executives and staff.
This award honors an executive-level individual who has advanced the cause of financial technology innovation from the business side of the aisle. The winner of this award can be from a solutions provider, an end-user firm, or related consultancy committed to improving securities operations for financial services firms. The winner must demonstrate that he or she has effectively worked with IT managers and operations staff.
This is one of the most prestigious honors in the FTF Awards program, recognizing a provider that has demonstrated overall excellence across the board. The winner will have distinguished itself through exceptional client service, industry leadership, innovation, and measurable impact on clients' success. This award goes beyond excellence in a single category — it celebrates a provider that has elevated the standard for what it means to serve capital markets firms.
This is one of the most prestigious honors in the FTF Awards program, recognizing a software solution that has made an outstanding impact on securities operations. The winner will have delivered clear business benefits, advanced the state of the industry, and demonstrated innovation that sets it apart from the competition. This award goes beyond excellence in a single function—it celebrates a solution that has transformed how firms operate.
This award celebrates an individual or an organization within the securities operations community that not only advanced innovative solutions but also demonstrated meaningful progress in promoting the welfare of others. The winner in this category has had a profound impact upon the greater good.
Join FTF as we celebrate and recognize the professionals, financial technology vendors, service providers, industry bodies, and regulators who have made significant strides and noteworthy achievements in operational excellence over the 2023 calendar year.
Watch the video below to view highlights from the 2024 Awards celebration!
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