5 Warning Signs Your Post-Trade Workflow May Be Outdated

Are your post-trade operations really keeping pace with today’s markets?

The question hits at something I see repeatedly across the industry. Brokers, asset managers, and ops teams are all grappling with the same reality: workflows that were “good enough” a few years back are struggling with pressing T+1 deadlines, multi-asset trading, and tighter compliance rules. Most firms know something feels off, but they can’t quite put their finger on it.

If that sounds familiar, here are five warning signs I see again and again.

1. You’re running your ops on spreadsheets

Let’s be honest — Excel has become the duct tape of post-trade operations. Need a reconciliation? Export to Excel. Need a quick break check? Excel. Need a report for management? Excel again.

The problem is, spreadsheets don’t scale. They’re built around people, not processes and teams. One fat-finger error or version mix-up, and suddenly you’re chasing a mismatch for hours. I’ve seen teams with dozens of complex macros that only one person knows how to fix. That’s not a system — that’s a dependency risk.

If you’re relying on Excel to plug holes in your workflow, it’s a sign the underlying process isn’t robust enough.

2. Settlement mismatches are becoming routine

A settlement mismatch should be an exception, not part of the daily routine. But I see firms where settlement fails are treated almost like background noise.

Every mismatch costs time: ops teams chasing down counterparties, escalating to trading desks, sending endless emails back and forth. And in some markets, failures bring direct financial penalties. If your team is constantly firefighting, that’s energy not going into client service or scaling the business.

The bigger issue is normalisation. Once mismatches become “just how things are,” risk piles up quietly until something goes seriously wrong.

3. Confirmations and allocations are too slow

In a T+1 world, every hour matters. Yet I still hear about ops teams chasing confirmations by phone at 9pm, or waiting on manual allocation files from counterparties the next morning.

The trouble is, those delays eat into an already short settlement window. By the time the numbers line up, you’re out of time to fix issues. That’s when you start missing the market. Clients notice when their confirmations arrive late, and they don’t care about the reason — they just expect you to be on time.

If confirmations and allocations are lagging, it’s a red flag.

4. Adding a new asset class feels painful

Here’s a good test: when your firm decides to expand into a new product, how does your post-trade team react?

• Excited for growth?

• Or quietly dreading the operational complexity?

If it’s the second one, that tells you a lot. Outdated workflows are often so inflexible that adding a new asset class means building another manual process or tacking on yet another system. That creates silos, and silos mean more reconciliations, more duplication, more room for error.

Growth shouldn’t equal operational chaos. If it does, the workflow is holding you back.

5. Compliance and reporting are filling your week

Regulation isn’t going away. If anything, the demands on reporting are only getting tougher.

I’ve worked with firms where regulatory reporting meant exporting data from four or five systems, stitching it together manually, and double-checking everything line by line. That’s days of effort just to hit a filing deadline. In some cases, entire weeks are lost preparing for one audit.

The risk is obvious: the more manual the reporting, the higher the chance of missing something. Regulators don’t care how hard it was to compile — they only care that it’s accurate and on time.

If compliance feels like a recurring burden, it’s a clear sign your workflow is no longer fit for purpose.

The bigger picture

These five issues might seem separate — spreadsheets here, compliance headaches there — but they’re all symptoms of the same root problem: workflows that were built for a slower, simpler market.

The market isn’t slowing down. Settlement windows are tighter. Clients expect faster responses. Regulators want more transparency. Asset managers and brokers can’t afford to run post-trade like it’s still 2010.

The truth is, “good enough” operations don’t stay good enough for long. They become cost centres, risk magnets, and eventually, client retention problems.

What to do next

Spotting the signs is step one. The harder part is fixing them. That usually means:

• Automating reconciliations instead of patching with spreadsheets

• Building workflows that can flex across products

• Tightening up confirmation and allocation timelines

• Making compliance part of the process, not an afterthought

It doesn’t all need to change overnight. But ignoring the red flags is risky. At some point, the market — or a regulator — will force the issue.

Final thought

If any of these warning signs sound familiar, it’s worth asking: are our workflows keeping up with the market, or are we just patching holes?

The firms that get ahead are the ones that treat post-trade not as “back office admin,” but as a core part of better client service and a driver of revenue growth. That shift in mindset makes all the difference.

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