Post Trade
In this latest Risk.net article, Hiroki Tomiyasu, Head of Post Trade, Japan and Head of Post Trade Solutions, APAC, and Andrew Williams, CEO of Post Trade Solutions, share their insights on how LSEG is streamlining processes to deliver greater transparency, resilience, and operational optimisation for market participants.
Market volatility, regulatory reform and the shift toward greater automation are reshaping the post-trade landscape. To help institutions better manage counterparty and operational risk in this environment, London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) has connected the dots between a part of its suite of post-trade businesses with the launch of Post Trade Solutions – including Acadia, Quantile, SwapAgent and TradeAgent – delivering unified infrastructure aimed at reducing cost, balance sheet usage and friction across both cleared and uncleared markets.
LSEG’s Andrew Williams outlines the group’s vision for bringing the benefits of clearing to bilateral trades, while Hiroki Tomiyasu highlights how LSEG is adapting these solutions to address the specific risk and regulatory challenges in the Asia-Pacific region.
Extending clearing benefits to the uncleared market
“The high-level vision is about bringing the benefits of clearing to the uncleared space,” says Andrew Williams, CEO of Post Trade Solutions at LSEG.
For years, we focused mainly on clearing, but a material part of the over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market will remain uncleared – not every product or counterparty fits neatly within the cleared space. The goal is to bring together complementary services that reduce balance sheet and operational cost, and to apply central processing principles to achieve the efficiency clients and the market are looking for.
Andrew Williams
Building an integrated post-trade ecosystem
The integration of some of LSEG’s post-trade businesses under Post Trade Solutions has been a multi-year effort. SwapAgent, Quantile and Acadia now operate as core pillars of a joined-up model that spans the full spectrum of OTC derivatives.
“SwapAgent is a platform for uncleared derivatives where we centrally calculate relevant margin and cash flow, holding a golden record of each trade – very much like a CCP but without being the central counterparty,” Williams says. “Meanwhile, Acadia processes collateral workflows and Quantile gives us the ability to optimise risk across portfolios – whether cleared, uncleared or SwapAgent – helping clients reduce exposure and rebalance risk.”
The integration of these businesses creates what Williams describes as a “comprehensive post-trade infrastructure” that can cover the entire OTC portfolio and automate key risk management processes. “Ultimately, our aim is to make optimisation and balance sheet management seamless and automated,” he says. “The goal is for these processes to operate on a daily cycle, so risk management becomes continuous rather than periodic.”
This vision is underpinned by LSEG’s long-standing position as a trusted market infrastructure provider. “Being part of LSEG is fundamental to realising our vision,” Williams says. “The Group has deep, long-term relationships across the entire market – from global banks to the buy side – which means we can build consensus more easily and test our ideas with clients.”
That network, he adds, also underpins client confidence in LSEG’s ability to deliver transformation on a multi-year horizon.
Clients need to know we’ll be there next year and the year after – because much of what we’re doing involves long-term change. “Operating central infrastructure requires the trust and resilience expected of a financial market infrastructure (FMI) – a role LSEG is privileged to hold.
Andrew Williams
The efficiency imperative
As regulatory and capital pressures persist, efficiency remains the central theme driving LSEG’s post-trade roadmap. “The biggest driver for us is efficiency – both capital and operational,” says Williams. “Banks want to be more capital-efficient, balance-sheet-efficient, margin-efficient. Our services are aimed squarely at reducing capital, margin and balance sheet while building scalable, automated processes to achieve those outcomes operationally.”
The rollout of the standardised approach to counterparty credit risk (SA-CCR) has heightened those priorities, particularly in markets like FX where balance sheet consumption can be heavy. “The general theme hasn’t changed – but it’s intensifying,” Williams says. “Post the global financial crisis of 2008, capital requirements went up significantly, and new regulations continue to sharpen the focus on efficiency.”
Asia-Pacific’s unique market and margin pressures
While the global drivers of efficiency and automation are universal, Asia-Pacific (APAC) presents unique structural and regulatory challenges. “In Asia, markets tend to be more directional and concentrated – and that creates very specific risk management challenges,” explains Hiroki Tomiyasu, LSEG’s head of Post Trade Japan and head of Post Trade Solutions, APAC.
Tomiyasu, who joined LSEG from the banking sector earlier this year, points to the region’s heavy concentration of USD funding and FX hedging as a key source of systemic sensitivity. “Institutions such as Japanese banks, life insurers, Australian superannuation funds and sovereign wealth funds all hold US dollar assets and need FX hedges,” he says. “That creates wrong-way risk for global dealers, who have become increasingly reluctant to provide liquidity. As a result, risk optimisation and margin efficiency are critical for Asian market participants.”
The gradual rollout of margin rules across the region is amplifying this pressure. “Japan is already fully implemented, but India, Indonesia and China are catching up, and also there is still work to do in Korea,” says Tomiyasu. “As margin regulations expand, margin calls are becoming more frequent and operationally demanding. That’s why LSEG’s Margin Manager service is so important – it helps clients manage the growing complexity.”
To meet that demand, LSEG has been expanding its footprint across the region. “We’ve increased headcount in APAC significantly, with new hires in Tokyo, Singapore and Manila,” Tomiyasu notes.
We’re now better able to support clients during local hours and have even introduced an Asia time zone-friendly compression and optimisation service – the first of its kind – following a successful proof of concept in July.
Hiroki Tomiyasu
Integrated support tailored to Asia’s post-trade needs
Against this backdrop of regulatory change and growing market complexity, Tomiyasu says the strength of LSEG’s regional strategy lies in its ability to connect all elements of the post-trade process.
Because we have SwapAgent, Quantile and Acadia under one roof, we can offer a single, streamlined process for optimisation and margin management. Clients in Asia don’t need to adjust their existing workflows – we can take data directly from Acadia, with client consent, and run initial margin optimisation across both cleared and bilateral positions.
Hiroki Tomiyasu
That integrated model, he adds, is particularly powerful in FX derivatives, where activity is expanding rapidly across the region. “We see strong non-deliverable forward (NDF) activity in Taiwan, Korea, India and China,” says Tomiyasu. “We can selectively clear those NDFs through LCH’s ForexClear, or use them to reduce initial margin requirements.”
With LSEG also providing trading and reporting tools – including Tradeweb and Regulatory Reporting Solutions – he says clients can access support “across the full trading lifecycle, from pre-trade to post-trade, in one integrated framework.”
Managing fragmentation and complexity
That integration is critical in a region as diverse as Asia-Pacific, where fragmented markets and multiple clearing systems create additional layers of complexity. Tomiyasu notes that Japan’s JPY swap market alone has grown almost eightfold in the past three years, while firms must navigate differences between local and global CCPs, interest rate benchmarks and onshore-offshore FX markets. “Efficient risk and resource management in such a fragmented environment is difficult, and that’s where our optimisation and margin tools become invaluable.”
He adds that Asian market participants tend to have genuine hedging needs rather than speculative exposures, meaning their trades are long-dated, sticky and capital-intensive. “For life insurers and pension funds, managing scarce resources like funding cost and capital cost is critical,” he says. “Our solutions allow them to move risk efficiently across counterparties without disturbing their existing hedge accounting. That’s a big advantage for clients in this region.”
Driving post-trade efficiency across Asia and beyond
By linking its global infrastructure with regional expertise, LSEG enables clients to manage risk more efficiently across cleared and uncleared markets. From automating margin and portfolio optimisation to streamlining NDF clearing in Asia, the group reduces operational friction, lowers balance sheet usage, and simplifies compliance with evolving regulations. This integrated approach equips institutions to respond quickly to market and regulatory changes while laying the groundwork for further innovation.
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