The foreign exchange (FX) space today is undergoing a rapid evolution. Thanks to growing electronification, greater investment in technology and analytics and industry-wide momentum toward multi-asset trading, it has never been more important to update, adapt and customise systems and workflows and ultimately create intellectual property for these markets – yet many market participants struggle to do so.

Most of the vendors who sell to this market do not provide adequate solutions. On one side, monolithic providers have created a fixed set of functionality and configuration, with recent consolidation only serving to further reduce diversity on offer. On the other hand, there are a handful of vendors that focus on FX , developing best of breed of a very specialised component that must fit into a larger, flexible infrastructure. Then there are the banks that choose to eschew third-party solutions entirely and build their own in-house systems, creating high costs and ongoing maintenance pressure.

These tactics represent the industry’s efforts to identify the best path forward in a shifting landscape, but in reality, there is no one-size-fits-all model. FX trading platforms should be a unique fit for each client, leveraging component-based and modular design to create flexibility, support the creation and management of IP and maximize the impact of each tool.

This article explores how Broadridge Trading and Connectivity Solutions, solve pain points in FX markets and why these challenges have become so acute in recent years.