Post-Trade Glossary & FAQs | Capital Markets Terms Explained
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Glossary & FAQs

The questions sell-side firms actually ask us in the first meeting, answered without the sales layer – then the vocabulary of post-trade in plain English, with the part of the platform that handles each one.

Frequently asked

Short answers, with the numbers behind them.

It is the post-trade operating platform that sits behind your front office. Trade capture and allocation through clearing, settlement, custody, corporate actions, margin, securities lending, accounting, payments, reconciliation and reporting – one configurable system rather than eight.

It runs alongside your OMS and trading platforms, not instead of them. Your front office does not change; your back office stops being the constraint.

100M+ trades processed · 30 years of capital-markets engineering

  • Configured, not coded. Around 70% of what a broker needs is out of the box; the rest is configuration, not a change request queue.
  • One instance, many markets. Multi-entity, multi-currency, multi-asset on a single deployment - no regional system per country.
  • Modular rollout. Take settlement first, corporate actions later. No rip-and-replace.
  • Domain-led delivery. Implementation teams are capital-markets specialists, not generalist consultants.

12 CSD connections · 25+ markets · 90+ specialists across 10 countries

Equities, fixed income and bonds, CFDs, listed derivatives, structured products, and tokenised or digital assets – on the same instance, with the same lifecycle engine and reference-data model.

Adding an asset class is a configuration exercise, not a second platform.

Integration-first by design: REST and XML APIs for real-time flow, FIX and SWIFT for market infrastructure, ISO 20022 for standardised messaging, batch file interfaces for legacy systems, and message queues for asynchronous workflows.

Adapters normalise payloads at the edge so business rules stay in one orchestration layer rather than being duplicated per connection.

Every event is captured with its full lineage – who or what acted, on which record, against which rule. Exception handling, entitlement calculations and reporting all draw on the same audit trail, so evidence for a regulator or an internal review is a query, not a reconstruction exercise.

T+1 ready today, T+0 capable. The platform processes trades as events rather than in overnight batches, so validation, matching and instruction generation happen inside the compressed window instead of after it.

Practically, that means fewer fails, earlier capital release and no scramble at cut-off.

See T+1 Settlement

90%+ straight-through processing is the standard outcome; mature deployments run higher. It comes from automated matching, allocation and confirmation, rules-based exception flagging, and automated corporate-actions processing – not from adding staff.

90%+ STP · ~50% fewer errors · 17,000+ man-hours saved a year

Yes. Active-active clustering, cross-region failover and geo-redundant replication mean there is no batch window to protect and no processing pause between sessions.

Extended hours and additional time zones therefore do not require a proportional increase in operations headcount.

99.99% uptime SLA on managed deployments

Breaks are classified and routed the moment they occur, with the probable cause and the resolution path attached. Routine breaks clear on rules; the queue your team sees is only the ones that need judgement.

Under T+1 this is the difference between resolving a break and carrying it into a fail.

See AI & Exception Intelligence

  • Cloud-hosted (SaaS). Fully managed by NOVA CMX - fastest to live, lowest run cost, no infrastructure to procure.
  • NOVA-managed, locally installed. Runs on your infrastructure, monitored and maintained by us. Local data control with managed-service economics.
  • On-premise, locally managed. Full internal IT control, for strict data-sovereignty or regulatory mandates.
Same feature set in all three, and cloud-agnostic – AWS, Azure or private cloud. No vendor lock-in to unwind later.

See Architecture & Deployment

UAT including data migration in as few as six weeks. Recent Tier-1 go-lives have landed in 12 weeks, with roughly 70% of functionality delivered out of the box.

Migration from legacy systems is in scope as standard, not a separate programme.

12-week Tier-1 go-live · 70% out of the box

No. Coexistence is the default: NOVA CMX runs in parallel with your existing platform, module by module, so cutover happens once the numbers agree rather than on a fixed date with no way back.

That is what keeps the risk profile of this different from an 18-36 month replacement programme.

Your choice. Teams that want to own operations do; teams that would rather not can hand monitoring, releases, upgrades and first-line support to our managed service – the same specialists who built the platform, across the time zones you trade in.

Subscription-based with no large upfront capital outlay. Pricing follows the modules you take and the volumes you run, so the cost curve tracks the business rather than a licence negotiated years ago.
  • ~34% lower operating cost across the post-trade base, with up to 40% saved on IT.
  • ~50% faster settlement end to end, and ~50% fewer errors through automated reconciliation.
  • 5× trade volume absorbed with no additional headcount.
  • 70%+ less reconciliation effort and ~40% less regulatory reporting effort.
Payback on targeted automation typically runs 6-18 months depending on scope.

Figures drawn from live client engagements

That is the point of high STP. When only genuine exceptions reach a human, volume growth stops translating into headcount growth – clients have taken a 5× increase in trades on the same team.
Yes – and under the same controls, reporting and risk framework as traditional assets, which is what makes it usable by a regulated broker. Trade capture through validation, settlement, accounting and custody, unified across DLT and conventional rails, with an immutable audit trail.

See T+1 Settlement

Inside operations, not on top of them. The intelligence layer is trained on the platform’s own workflows, reconciliation rules and exception history – so it explains why a break happened and what resolves it, rather than answering general questions. The measurable effects are faster resolution, shorter new-hire ramp-up, and fewer tickets raised at all.

See AI & Exception Intelligence

It is the post-trade operating platform that sits behind your front office. Trade capture and allocation through clearing, settlement, custody, corporate actions, margin, securities lending, accounting, payments, reconciliation and reporting – one configurable system rather than eight.

It runs alongside your OMS and trading platforms, not instead of them. Your front office does not change; your back office stops being the constraint.

100M+ trades processed · 30 years of capital-markets engineering

  • Configured, not coded. Around 70% of what a broker needs is out of the box; the rest is configuration, not a change request queue.
  • One instance, many markets. Multi-entity, multi-currency, multi-asset on a single deployment - no regional system per country.
  • Modular rollout. Take settlement first, corporate actions later. No rip-and-replace.
  • Domain-led delivery. Implementation teams are capital-markets specialists, not generalist consultants.

12 CSD connections · 25+ markets · 90+ specialists across 10 countries

Equities, fixed income and bonds, CFDs, listed derivatives, structured products, and tokenised or digital assets – on the same instance, with the same lifecycle engine and reference-data model.

Adding an asset class is a configuration exercise, not a second platform.

Integration-first by design: REST and XML APIs for real-time flow, FIX and SWIFT for market infrastructure, ISO 20022 for standardised messaging, batch file interfaces for legacy systems, and message queues for asynchronous workflows.

Adapters normalise payloads at the edge so business rules stay in one orchestration layer rather than being duplicated per connection.

Every event is captured with its full lineage – who or what acted, on which record, against which rule. Exception handling, entitlement calculations and reporting all draw on the same audit trail, so evidence for a regulator or an internal review is a query, not a reconstruction exercise.

T+1 ready today, T+0 capable. The platform processes trades as events rather than in overnight batches, so validation, matching and instruction generation happen inside the compressed window instead of after it.

Practically, that means fewer fails, earlier capital release and no scramble at cut-off.

See T+1 Settlement

90%+ straight-through processing is the standard outcome; mature deployments run higher. It comes from automated matching, allocation and confirmation, rules-based exception flagging, and automated corporate-actions processing – not from adding staff.

90%+ STP · ~50% fewer errors · 17,000+ man-hours saved a year

Yes. Active-active clustering, cross-region failover and geo-redundant replication mean there is no batch window to protect and no processing pause between sessions.

Extended hours and additional time zones therefore do not require a proportional increase in operations headcount.

99.99% uptime SLA on managed deployments

Breaks are classified and routed the moment they occur, with the probable cause and the resolution path attached. Routine breaks clear on rules; the queue your team sees is only the ones that need judgement.

Under T+1 this is the difference between resolving a break and carrying it into a fail.

See AI & Exception Intelligence

  • Cloud-hosted (SaaS). Fully managed by NOVA CMX - fastest to live, lowest run cost, no infrastructure to procure.
  • NOVA-managed, locally installed. Runs on your infrastructure, monitored and maintained by us. Local data control with managed-service economics.
  • On-premise, locally managed. Full internal IT control, for strict data-sovereignty or regulatory mandates.
Same feature set in all three, and cloud-agnostic – AWS, Azure or private cloud. No vendor lock-in to unwind later.

See Architecture & Deployment

UAT including data migration in as few as six weeks. Recent Tier-1 go-lives have landed in 12 weeks, with roughly 70% of functionality delivered out of the box.

Migration from legacy systems is in scope as standard, not a separate programme.

12-week Tier-1 go-live · 70% out of the box

No. Coexistence is the default: NOVA CMX runs in parallel with your existing platform, module by module, so cutover happens once the numbers agree rather than on a fixed date with no way back.

That is what keeps the risk profile of this different from an 18-36 month replacement programme.

Your choice. Teams that want to own operations do; teams that would rather not can hand monitoring, releases, upgrades and first-line support to our managed service – the same specialists who built the platform, across the time zones you trade in.

Subscription-based with no large upfront capital outlay. Pricing follows the modules you take and the volumes you run, so the cost curve tracks the business rather than a licence negotiated years ago.
  • ~34% lower operating cost across the post-trade base, with up to 40% saved on IT.
  • ~50% faster settlement end to end, and ~50% fewer errors through automated reconciliation.
  • 5× trade volume absorbed with no additional headcount.
  • 70%+ less reconciliation effort and ~40% less regulatory reporting effort.
Payback on targeted automation typically runs 6-18 months depending on scope.

Figures drawn from live client engagements

That is the point of high STP. When only genuine exceptions reach a human, volume growth stops translating into headcount growth – clients have taken a 5× increase in trades on the same team.
Yes – and under the same controls, reporting and risk framework as traditional assets, which is what makes it usable by a regulated broker. Trade capture through validation, settlement, accounting and custody, unified across DLT and conventional rails, with an immutable audit trail.

See T+1 Settlement

Inside operations, not on top of them. The intelligence layer is trained on the platform’s own workflows, reconciliation rules and exception history – so it explains why a break happened and what resolves it, rather than answering general questions. The measurable effects are faster resolution, shorter new-hire ramp-up, and fewer tickets raised at all.

See AI & Exception Intelligence

The language of post-trade

Glossary.

Plain-English definitions, each with the reason it matters commercially and the part of NOVA CMX that owns it.
32 terms shown

Capital markets - engineered

Still a question we have not answered?

Bring us the awkward one – the market you cannot automate, the break you keep carrying, the cutover nobody wants to sign off. We will answer it against your trade flow, not in the abstract.
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