By Hirander Misra, Chairman & CEO, GMEX Group

The pressure is on for market operators to meet the widening expectations of customers as technology presents new efficiencies and opportunities.

Market participants are seeking exchanges that can provide the latest in electronic trading and post-trade infrastructure. Not only that, they’re looking for operators who are future-proofing those services with platforms that can adapt to, and incorporate, new innovations such as Blockchain as well as connect with a broad range of external technologies.

In this series of blogs, we will examine some of the steps modern markets can take to satisfy that demand.

In an industry that’s becoming increasingly decentralised and where digitised assets have become the basis of trade, interoperability, agility and transparency are going to be bywords for modern exchanges.

Across three blogs, we will highlight how those tenets can provide a roadmap to building new exchanges with trading systems that are hybrid (centralised and decentralised), fast, consistent and that offer a broader range of services to a more diverse customer base across asset classes.

In an examination of clearing and settlement platforms, we explain how agile and nimble infrastructure that incorporates the latest in data-integrity protections and distributed ledger technology can both satisfy customer demand and meet increasingly stringent regulations.

Also amid concerns that commodities markets are vulnerable to abuse and guilty of neglecting the physical assets that underlay them, we argue that exchanges can play a role in safeguarding the trust that’s key to their continued success.

The pace of innovation in financial services is rapid and the systems that will drive the successful marketplaces of tomorrow are already under development. In these blogs we make the case that the exchanges of today must seek out and harness those game-changing structures or risk being edged out by as yet unseen disruptors.

For more articles in this series please see:

Part 2: The Next Frontier In Exchange Trading Systems

Part 3: What’s Next in Post Trade Clearing and Settlement?

Part 4: The Electronic Warehouse Receipts System for the Commodities Markets of Tomorrow