Derivatives firms are increasingly treating post-trade operations as a source of competitive advantage and capital efficiency rather than simply a back-office cost, according to research from OSTTRA and Acuiti.
The study of 45 sell-side firms found that 96% of respondents active in OTC derivatives and 89% in listed derivatives see improved netting and optimisation as a significant route to balance-sheet and capital efficiency. Meanwhile, 86% regard superior post-trade transparency, speed and automation as a competitive differentiator for institutional clients.
Significant inefficiencies remain. Two-thirds of respondents said listed derivatives operations teams spend more than 10% of their time resolving exceptions, fails and settlement breaks, while 82% reported that more than 10% of bilateral OTC trades are still confirmed manually.
AI adoption is also gathering pace, with almost a third of firms already deploying the technology in production and a similar proportion running active pilots.
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