The explosive growth of electronic markets in recent years has moved modern capital markets towards the economists’ ideal of markets with high information dissemination and low transaction costs. However, as these markets have matured, legacy infrastructure and technologies have increasingly become a constraint, forcing market participants to invest in specialized, proprietary and expensive technology that provides little or no competitive benefits.
 
The current climate of economic restraint and increased regulatory oversight provides a unique opportunity for capital market participants to achieve a step-change in IT efficiency by significantly increasing the use of common technical standards within the industry. Such standards allow the creation of an ecosystem of service providers that provide competing solutions for commoditized business domains, thereby allowing capital markets participants to focus their internal technology strategies and spend on their unique business propositions.
 
As a trusted partner to the majority of the world’s leading investment banks, Etrading Software is uniquely placed to facilitate the development of such market standards, by promoting change through existing standards bodies wherever possible, or otherwise through the creation of informal groups of participants that wish to collaborate together.