Amy Flynn is Head of Execution Services, BNY Mellon.

What are your expectations for 2023?

The evolution of trading continues. Investments in trading technology, decision support tools and systematic workflows will continue being primary drivers in evolving the trading experience for investment managers. These tools and technologies are baseline for buyside trading desks and provides traders a comprehensive view of their liquidity and market risks as they navigate sustained headline risk and market volatility.

More adoption of data visualization tools that can really bring execution results to life will also continue be a priority. Among others, we are leveraging Python and Python friendly database and Business Intelligence (BI) tools with flexible customization capabilities to create more interactive meeting engagement across all stakeholders.

What trends are underway?

One big trend we’re seeing is the adoption of partial outsourcing or supplemental trading in support of new product growth.  Essentially the outsourced trading desk becomes an extension of the firm’s internal trading desk and provides sector-pointed trade execution for new products or regions in which they do not have an existing local market presence.

What are your clients pain points and how have they changed over the past year?

Data is a key driver in all decision making, especially in how we judge execution quality. It also takes a significant time and effort to review the data inputs into TCA reporting and ensure it provides accurate and actionable results. However, advancements in transparency and technology have allowed us the ability to put every trade under a microscope, but the complexity of such analysis is also very high.

For reporting teams, they need to have a deep understanding of the nuances that exist across different markets and technologies, and then apply a rigorous data cleansing and normalization standard to the data set, across many different market venues and protocols. These are all non-trivial challenges that must be addressed before having a meaningful and actionable TCA process and feedback loop.