Finastra has secured the award for “Best AI-Enabled App for Capital Markets” for its Summit solution at the first-ever AI in Capital Markets Awards, hosted by the A-Team Group. This new awards programme recognises the growing importance of artificial intelligence in transforming capital markets by honouring the leading AI-driven solutions that deliver significant value to financial institutions.
Finastra’s Summit, a comprehensive solution for OTC derivatives trading, has been recognised for its innovative use of AI to automate and streamline post-trade operations. The AI-powered pre-settlement matching solution within Summit is designed to tackle the complexities of unstructured data, improve accuracy, and reduce operational risk, which is increasingly critical as the industry moves towards compressed settlement cycles like T+1.To understand more about the award-winning solution and its impact, TradingTech Insight spoke with Elena Nicolescu, Director of Product Management for Summit, Treasury & Capital Markets at Finastra.
TTI: Congratulations on the award. To start, could you give us a high-level overview of the Summit pre-settlement matching solution and the specific post-trade challenge it was designed to solve?
EN: Thank you. Summit’s AI-powered pre-settlement matching solution automates payment validation by extracting and reconciling trade details from unstructured data. This improves accuracy, speeds up processing, and reduces operational risk.
Fully integrated with Summit, the solution supports next-day settlement readiness, enhances compliance, and delivers measurable efficiency across post-trade operations.
It was designed to solve challenges such as the validation of cash settlements before sending payment orders, to secure payment orders and meet cut-off times, and to handle different file formats in an automated manner.
In fact, the most notable challenge our clients face is managing a myriad of non-standard information flows and processes. To complete their daily settlements, they are often forced to rely on manual steps, such as reconciling emails, screenshots, and spreadsheets with trade data; tasks that cannot be resolved through mapping or automated tools.
Our solution not only provides an engine that can easily interpret data and extract required information, but it seamlessly introduces that data into Summit’s STP processing, allowing the client to use a fully automated, end-to-end workflow.
TTI: Your entry highlights an AI-powered workflow as the core innovation. Can you elaborate on how this AI differs from traditional, rule-based systems in handling unstructured data like PDFs and how it continuously learns to improve matching accuracy?
EN: Unlike traditional rule-based systems, Summit’s solution uses AI to interpret and structure the external data into Summit readable formats, enabling seamless integration into the STP workflow.
The AI continuously improves matching accuracy by learning from historical data and exception patterns. We also offer customers the flexibility to integrate their own AI engines, as more and more frequently, we see clients adopting AI strategies centred around their proprietary models. In this case, it can incorporate proprietary data to improve matching accuracy.
TTI: With the industry’s move to T+1 settlement, how critical is this level of automation for ensuring regulatory readiness and reducing the risk of failed trades under compressed timelines?
EN: This is part of the big picture. As these settlements are part of the T+1 reg readiness deadlines, the technology frees up operations and will lead to increased efficiency in other areas.
That said, automation enables real-time visibility into trade status, allowing firms to forecast cash needs and manage liquidity proactively. It increases the volume of settlement notifications that can be handled, as manual processes simply cannot scale to meet this speed, especially across time zones.
This impacts risk reduction, minimising trade failures due to mismatches or late instructions. It is also important for regulatory compliance, as it helps institutions align with SDR, SEC, and other global mandates. The solution handles high volumes without manual intervention, supporting operational scalability. All of these improvements increase competitive advantage, enabling faster settlement, freeing up capital and improving client service.
TTI: The solution is described as “client-proven.” Could you share any anonymised metrics that demonstrate the measurable gains in straight-through processing (STP) rates and operational efficiency that clients have achieved since implementation?
EN: We’ve developed this module in close collaboration with some of our largest clients, including institutions that process millions of trades weekly. This has allowed us to rigorously test the solution across a wide range of use cases and operational environments.
While we do not have public client metrics available today, we can share that one of our clients – a major global custodian bank – currently manages over 58 million trades in their database and processes approximately 500,000 to 600,000 trades daily through this workflow. The scale and complexity of their operations have helped validate the robustness and scalability of the module.
The solution has been deployed in high-volume environments where manual reconciliation was previously a bottleneck. By automating exception handling and improving matching accuracy through AI trained on historical data and exception patterns, clients have reported significant improvements in operational efficiency and straight-through processing (STP) – even if these gains are not yet publicly quantified.
Our internal testing has shown that the pre-settlement matching workflow significantly speeds up processing and improves accuracy as well. We have seen massive error reduction, as the automated matching process minimises errors, reducing discrepancies by over 90%.
In addition, there are demonstratable gains in processing speeds. Real-time matching capabilities ensure that 95% of settlement flows are processed within seconds of receipt.
TTI: Your entry notes a “cloud-ready architecture.” What benefits does this provide to clients in terms of deployment speed, scalability, and integration with their existing infrastructure via RESTful APIs?
EN: The solution is cloud-ready. Built on a containerised, scalable infrastructure with RESTful APIs, the solution supports rapid deployment and high availability, making it easy to integrate with clients’ existing systems and workflows.
Because it is fully embedded within Summit’s post-trade processing engine, including Swift messaging, netting, and accounting workflows, it also drives efficiency across post-trade operations.
Beyond deployment and integration, a cloud-ready solution opens the door to broader synergies. Many clients are building centralised cloud infrastructures that house all their operational data, including Summit data. When paired with an AI engine trained on this unified dataset, they unlock powerful new capabilities for insight generation, predictive analytics, and operational optimisation. This positions them at the forefront of innovation, with a data strategy that is both scalable and future-proof.
TTI: The solution is fully embedded within Summit’s post-trade ecosystem. What are the advantages of this integrated approach compared to using a standalone, third-party AI application?
EN: There isn’t any need for additional development to integrate the solution.
The Summit Pre-Settlement Matching blotter displays both internal and external settlement flows – out-of-the-box, highlighting pending and matched items. This provides transparency, and a clear view of the settlement status.
TTI: Looking ahead, what is the future roadmap for this AI-enabled capability? Are you planning to expand its scope or introduce new machine-learning-driven features?
EN: Summit will remain a strategic platform for banks’ digital transformation and operational excellence by proactively adapting to market changes, regulatory developments, and client needs.
The team will continue to deliver timely, standards-aligned solutions through close customer collaboration and by leveraging flexible As-a-Service models for rapid, non-disruptive deployment.
Our key focus areas for Summit enhancements centre on workflow optimisation, scalability, and advanced analytics. The platform is being enhanced to support real-time processing and automation through APIs, AI, and service extensions, while consolidating asset classes and post-trade processes for unified back-office control.
Improvements in parallel processing and system performance aim to reduce total cost of ownership and boost operational efficiency. Additionally, Summit is expanding its risk analytics capabilities with new data extraction tools, integration layers, and a modernised data aggregation framework to deliver a more powerful and intuitive user experience.
Our ultimate and continuing goal is to develop Summit as the Cloud platform of choice for banks’ digital transformation and operational excellence.
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