Our Comprehensive Approach
Covering the Full Trading Lifecycle
Planning Best Execution
A key change as a result of MiFID II is how firms plan, monitor and prove Best Execution.
To help clients plan for and ensure Best Execution, we’ve built a platform and customised approach that identifies a wide range of order characteristics and processes that can benefit from different levels of our Best Execution Automation detailed below.

ADAPTIVE
The usual approach with these types of orders may be to route to a broker VWAP over the day, or participate to a certain level.
How do you ensure Best Execution?
Using a quantitative model from a third-party in an automated fashion can help with planning and proving Best Execution. We’ve found that adaptive automation benefits most from a model-driven approach to planning participation – nothing unusual is happening, so the models typically hold.

LOW TOUCH
These low touch orders have very little discretion from the trader, so automation can be applied to take these orders off the trader’s blotter and place them in the market.
How do you ensure Best Execution?
The traditional approach is to send low touch orders to several brokers over a set period and use the results to establish who is best at handling the flow. This works well for clients who don’t have a large number of low touch orders. For those that have a many low touch orders, FlexTrade adopts a proprietary scatter algorithm that selects a pre-defined broker and low touch algorithm to randomise a specified portion of the order flow. This creates a feedback loop with continuous improvement as orders are weighted across multiple brokers and algorithms depending on performance.

HIGH TOUCH
When a trader is dealing with a high touch order they may look across chat channels, IOIs, news and pre-trade analysis. Having all this information populate in the blotter automatically ensures information leakage is not a challenge.
How do you ensure Best Execution?
Our High Touch automation is a quantitative, data-driven approach that ensures the trader has all the information they require to add value when the time is right. Importantly, any order categorisation is recalculated in real-time to ensure the order hasn't popped out of a bucket due to an incoming alert or signal.

FLEXALGOWHEEL
The most common uses of this automation approach are to avoid inherent trader bias when routing an order, consolidate complex algorithms into a single set of parameters and to align execution objectives with the broker algorithm.
How do you ensure Best Execution?
The FlexAlgoWheelTM allows you to select the trading objective and strategy rather than the broker and algorithm. Once the objective and strategy have been selected the FlexAlgoWheelTM selects the broker and algorithm to align with those objectives. You have full visibility over where the order has gone, but the selection is automated. Over time, this automated process becomes a feedback loop to ensure continuous performance improvement. Other benefits includes:
- Quantitative performance metrics fed into the order routing decision
- Open architecture removes limitations on the number of characteristics that can be monitored
- Software approach allows the FlexAlgoWheelTM to evolve with time, adding non-traditional parameters to drive it
Monitoring Best Execution
Our flexible framework for order categorisation and definition allows multiple input parameters to be analysed and orders monitored through Best Execution alerting.
Designed to work seamlessly into the trader’s workflow, our alerting system gives traders the opportunity to do what they would normally do, if they had all the time in the world to dedicate to an order.
This is pure exception management – our clients work thousands of orders a day, our alerting framework keeps them informed and in full control of all their orders.
FlexTrade’s Alerting Framework

TRANSACTIONAL ORDER DATA
Captures all relevant information around orders, executions and FIX tag data.
- FlexAlgoWheelTM: Ensuring execution is in line with objectives
- Order Status Updates: Monitoring algorithm goals
- Intelligent Blotter: Automated switching based on market conditions

TRADITIONAL MARKET DATA
Brings together a wide range of market data to provide a full picture of liquidity.
- IOIs: Proprietary quality scoring and support for actionable IOIs
- Block Trades: Real-time alerting and highlighting
- Outliers: Monitor orders to any metric including sector, region, index or representative basket

MARKET INTELLIGENCE
Integration allow traders to enrich data with market context.
- OTAS: Alerts for insider dealings, EPS momentum, valuation, etc.
- Dataminr: social media aggregation and alerting
- RSRCHX: Indicates when new research is published
- Symphony: Inject messages and leverage bots to identify structure data to map back into a standardised format
- Voice: Capture call information, including counterparty and timestamps
Proving Best Execution
Best Execution across asset classes relies on a blended approach using TCA and trade lifecycle reconstruction.

GLOBAL EQUITIES & FX
FlexTCA captures real-time and post-trade analysis for proving Best Execution in global equities and FX.

FIXED INCOME
Proving Best Execution in fixed income relies on capturing all relevant events during the trade lifecycle, including voice and chat. Tracking transactional information, market data and intelligence ensures “all sufficient steps” taken can be reconstructed on demand.