In the economic market, "Trade Capture" means booking / capturing the trade into the structure used within the financial organization. At times, this may arise multiple times based on the intricacy of the trades and the capacity of the systems to be able to capture the economic, non-economic, and static details depending on the deal.
The rewarding trade capture within a trading system occurs when the trade facts are sent to the back office instantly, through an interface for operational processing. Most of the time, the trade details are recorded manually by the traders, when an STO (Securities Trading Organisation) does not have a trading system. This requires either collection by or distribution to the middle office or settlement department for operational processing. In such conditions, the traders are required to manage their trading positions manually, keeping it trendy with any latest trades.
The entire steps from the stage of order receipt and trade execution to the trade settlement are known as the “Trade Cycle”. This can be categorized into various stages as listed below.
Front Office
The front office, commonly referred to as the Trading Floor, performs two main function -
- Trade Capture
The trade gets initiated in the front office using the trading app, in accordance with the retail price of the instrument. Still, the buyer will have an opportunity to cite an offer to the selling party. The trade gets executed, only if the counterparty agrees to the trade details and is willing to enter the deal. Once the trade gets executed, it gets captured using a Trade Capture system, which gives the go-ahead to all the necessary trade information and assigns a trade confirmation number or a trade reference number. This number is unique and used for all the upcoming trade events such as amendments, cancellation and so on. This unique number indicates the booking confirmation and is sent to both sellers and buyers as an acknowledgment.
Middle Office
The Middle Office plays a very important part of the exception management. At this stage, three important steps are accomplished such as -
- Validation
- Booking
- Confirmation
By using the Order Management System (OMS), the tradesman works on the deal and the trade gets enhanced by the static data such as the Standard Settlement Instructions (SSI), Custodian Details, City Holidays, Special Instructions and so on. These static data details are vital for the execution and settlement of the trade. The allocation of the trade happens in the Middle Office, gets published in the Back Office, and finally considered live and operational.
Back Office
The Back office is considered the "backbone" of the entire trade life cycle. It mainly performs three vital functions such as -
- Clearing
- Settlement
- Accounting
This stage covers the significant operational activities such as record keeping, order confirmations, trade settlement, and regulatory reporting. Most of the time, the back office tasks are deployed to low-priced sources for its specific management activities, with a view to reducing the company costs, thus increasing their productivity by delivering better operational value.
The next activity soon after the trade execution is to capture the entire trade details, regardless of the base it is recorded without any hindrances. The trade which is executed initially is captured in the front office where the primary details of each Asset Management in trade are being recorded.
Conclusion
The complete Trade Life Cycle is a jumble of complex functions where the trade undergoes a stream of several events. There is a lot of manual involvement in all these events and this increments the time spent for processing and settlement of various functions.
