Most of the brokers that clear exchange-traded derivatives plan to spend more on the technology behind their trades over the next three years.
The study, conducted by research firm Acuiti in association with Nasdaq, found that 69% of futures commission merchants intend to increase their post-trade budgets, with 46% planning to lift spending by more than 10%.
Acuiti interviewed senior executives at 50 bank FCMs, non-bank FCMs and other clearing brokers worldwide, and separately polled its network of asset managers and hedge funds.
The numbers describe an unglamorous corner of the market that firms underfunded for years and now feel pressure to fix.
Legacy Tech Tops the List of FCM Pain Points
Just over half of the clearing firms surveyed, 53%, said their dependence on legacy post-trade systems was their single biggest operational problem. A similar share complained that there are not enough third-party vendors to choose from.
Most firms do not build this plumbing themselves. About 35% rely mainly on vendor platforms, 15% run mostly in-house systems and the other half use a mix of the two, which spreads the cost and frees firms to focus on winning clients, the report said.
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The concern, the report noted, is that much of that core technology is nearing the end of its life. The strain showed during the volatility that followed the spread of Covid-19 in 2020, when post-trade systems buckled under record volumes and triggered a wave of spending across the sell-side.
This is not the first time Acuiti has flagged the trend, having reported in 2024 that US clearing brokers were pouring money into front-office technology to fend off non-bank rivals.
A Shrinking Vendor Pool Meets a Spending Wave
The catch is that firms have fewer places to take their money. The number of third-party vendors serving the market has fallen over the past two decades as mergers thinned the field and some providers withdrew, the report said.
That has left clearing brokers leaning on a handful of incumbents such as FIS and ION Group even as they complain about the lack of choice.
That backdrop helps explain why Nasdaq attached its name to the research. The exchange operator sells Calypso, a clearing platform it pitches as a single system for risk, margin and collateral across listed and over-the-counter derivatives, and the survey's findings line up closely with what Calypso is built to address.
Nasdaq is not the only firm chasing the work. LSEG Technology supplied the post-trade platform that London clearing house LCH's EquityClear migrated onto, and in May 2024 Nasdaq agreed to plug its Real-Time Clearing system into FIA Tech's industry data network.
Nasdaq has also been pushing Calypso into digital assets, partnering with Talos in March on tokenized collateral after a green light from US securities regulators.
Spending Set to Rise, With AI in the Frame
Asked why budgets are climbing, firms gave two main reasons: more automation and client demand for new features. Both point to the same squeeze, the report said, with brokers trying to cut manual work while keeping demanding customers satisfied.
Artificial intelligence is edging into the picture. More than half of the firms, 56%, said they risk falling behind competitors if they do not fold AI or machine learning into their clearing operations.
When sizing up a vendor, resilience and reliability ranked first, followed by ease of integration, total cost of ownership and real-time processing.
Buy-Side Wants Clearer Margin Math
The asset managers and hedge funds on the other side of these relationships had their own complaints. Not one described the way their brokers treat risk across products as very consistent, while 82% called it quite consistent and the rest found it not very consistent at all.
Margin is the sore spot. Some 47% of buy-side firms named a lack of transparency over how margin is calculated as their top frustration, and 38% pointed to inconsistent methods across products and clearing houses.
They also want faster, more integrated data feeds, the report said.
What It Means for US Retail Forex Brokers
The FCM label stretches well beyond the futures clearing giants the report focuses on. In the United States, retail forex dealers register as FCMs too, which puts several familiar brokerage names inside the same regulatory bucket.
Only six of them report retail forex obligations to the CFTC, holding about $488.59 million in customer deposits in March.
That pool has been shrinking and consolidating much like the vendor market the report describes. StoneX, the owner of Forex.com, became the largest non-bank FCM in the country, by its own account, after buying futures broker R.J. O'Brien in a deal valued at roughly $900 million.
Retail-focused firms are moving the other way into listed markets, with IG's tastytrade and Plus500 both chasing US futures and options revenue.
