SunGard has launched Assent ATS, an alternative trading system that provides a crossing network for U.S. equity trade order flow. SunGard’s Assent ATS helps customers access liquidity by aggregating order flow from retail, institutional and high frequency customers of SunGard’s trading solutions such as Assent, Brass and GL solutions.
SunGard’s electronic crossing network provides an opportunity for customers to fill an order before they send it to displayed markets. Customers can also use the Assent Smart Order Router to participate in additional displayed and non-displayed markets. By leveraging the high volume of daily shares processed through SunGard’s trading solutions, the Assent ATS will help customers improve fill rates, reduce transaction costs and achieve faster trade execution with minimal market impact.
The continued fragmentation of liquidity presents a challenge for financial firms seeking “best execution,” defined by price improvement, speed and likelihood of execution. The ability for trading firms to access multiple execution venues helps them achieve “best execution.” SunGard’s Assent ATS provides firms with one execution point that has access to a diverse pool of liquidity, including other dark and displayed venues. Assent ATS is a component of SunGard’s trading solutions, which provides services at each point of the equity transaction lifecycle from order receipt, trading and marketplace routing to post-trade analytics, compliance monitoring and clearing. Assent ATS gives customers the ability to execute a trade within the same service, helping improve their overall trading performance, achieve economies of scale and lower their execution fees.
“When choosing a dark pool, firms are looking for liquidity, price improvement, match rates and speed,” says Larry Tabb, founder and chief executive officer of TABB Group, a financial markets research and advisory firm. “Accessing only one dark pool with one type of order flow is no longer sufficient. The goal in executing against dark liquidity is to intercept order flow where it first enters into the execution stream – what is called unique liquidity. Firms will benefit most from dark pools with diverse unique liquidity, access to other dark and displayed markets, a mechanism that facilitates price improvement and technology that limits any if not all information leakage.”
D.C.