Trade operations teams face increasing pressure to tighten processes, reduce costs, and ensure compliance—all while managing complex infrastructures and siloed systems.
But there’s good news: Automated orchestration solutions and generative AI (genAI) are helping teams address these challenges and reshape the trade operations landscape.
One significant challenge companies face is the shift to T+1 settlement cycles, which reduces the time to complete a trade from two business days to one. This tighter timeframe forces operations teams to adapt quickly; past strategies of assigning more employees to handle increasing volumes no longer suffice.
“Our clients have been through a transformation of offshoring, nearshoring, and trying to remove costs,” said Mark Wilson, Managing Director, Capital Markets at Accenture, in a recent panel discussion. “But the need to continue to do more with less is greater than it has ever been.”
This means firms must adapt work orchestration solutions that integrate processes across legacy systems, improving efficiency and minimizing risk.
But organizations don’t need to overhaul their entire infrastructure to take advantage of the advances that such orchestration offers, said Ryan Clare, Head of Corporate Transformation and Automation at Jefferies, during the panel discussion. Instead, he suggests layering orchestration tools on top of legacy platforms.
“The legacy platforms do their job very well,” he said. “You build a layer on top that just connects into them.” This “fabric layer,” as he calls it, enables greater automation while maintaining essential core operations. This helps avoid costly overhauls.
Generative AI in Action: Adding real value
GenAI also plays important role in transforming operations and is already delivering tangible benefits.
“We’ve used genAI for email automation—reading emails, doing analysis, inserting the results into workflows, and generating responses,” said Wilson. “For example, if a client asks about the status of a trade, genAI can pull the information from the order management system, generate the response, and place it in the user’s outbox for review.”
These capabilities reduce manual effort, ensure accuracy, and streamline communication. “It just allows you to start and finish the task much quicker and get to the answer faster,” said Clare.
While genAI is often hyped as revolutionary and with the potential to replace staff, John Almeida, Global Head of Wealth and Asset Management at ServiceNow, said he thinks genAI will instead be a technology used to enhance productivity.
“I don’t believe genAI is going to replace people,” he said. “It complements humans by making them more efficient—handling low-value tasks like summarizing documents so employees can focus on higher-value, customer-facing work.”
Accenture + ServiceNow: A work orchestration game-changer
Accenture has developed a new Intelligent Work Orchestration solution for the capital markets industry. Developed on the ServiceNow platform, Intelligent Work Orchestration bridges operational siloes with a single pane of glass—a centralized hub where teams can access everything they need to track progress and identify pain points.
Accenture’s solution is built around three core pillars:
- End-to-end process management to automate core trade processes
- Gen AI-powered email automation to streamline communication
- Centralized command centers to offer real-time insights for faster decision making
To learn more about how Accenture and ServiceNow are driving operational efficiency across capital markets and financial services or get in touch visit our resource page.
