The Smarter Back-Office

In a piece for the Stockbrokers and Investment Advisers Association, NOVA CMX Chief Commercial Officer Gaurav Mehta examines how artificial intelligence is beginning to change the rhythm of post-trade operations at Australian broking firms, not by removing experienced people from the equation, but by answering a more precise question: which decisions genuinely require one?

Gaurav identifies four areas where AI is delivering practical value today – exception triage, reconciliation, corporate actions monitoring, and settlement fail prediction, and draws a clear boundary between what machines do well (volume, pattern recognition, speed) and what experienced operations professionals must retain (credit decisions, client-facing resolution, regulatory judgement, and counterparty relationships).

The argument is grounded in the realities facing Australian brokers: rising transaction complexity, multi-venue positions across ASX and Cboe Australia, constrained specialist resources, and the economic cost of settlement fails. AI’s role, in Gaurav’s framing, is to make existing teams significantly more effective, not to replace the human judgement that post-trade operations has always depended on.