Nearly nine in ten sell-side firms and venues expect to raise front-office tech spend over the next five years as the pace of changes clouds investment decisions
LONDON, 10 November 2026 – Sell-side firms and trading venues are set to increase front-office technology investment, but the pace of change in both technology and market structure is creating uncertainty of investment strategies, a new report from Acuiti and Adaptive has found.
Riding the coming modernisation wave: Front-office technology investment in a fast-moving world, which is released today, is based on a survey and series of interviews with 44 senior executives at banks, broker-dealers, traditional exchanges and digital asset venues.
The pace of change in capital markets today is faster than it has ever been. In terms of market structure, new markets such as event contracts, new instruments like perpetual futures and the rise of retail trading are all forcing change. At the same time, the increasing capability of artificial intelligence is revolutionising technology investment and development processes.
The report finds that 87% of firms expect their investment in front-office technology to increase over the next five years, with a third anticipating a significant rise of more than 20%.
Volume growth and scalability requirements are the primary drivers of that investment, cited by 68% of respondents, followed by cost reduction and operational efficiency as well as expansion into new asset classes or markets.
However, 89% of respondents say the pace of market and technology change is creating uncertainty in their front-office investment decisions, with 36% describing that uncertainty as significant.
Legacy infrastructure remains the biggest obstacle to modernisation. Just 15% of firms describe their front-office technology as advanced, meaning predominantly cloud-native, modular and AI-ready.
The report also finds a clear link between the sophistication of technology stacks and how well-prepared firms are to meet competitive challenges. While 19% of firms are very confident that their front-office infrastructure can fend off competitive threats over the next five years, none of these respondents run legacy front-office systems, and no firm with advanced technology reported uncertainty about its ability to compete.
AI is becoming an increasingly important part of front-office strategy, although few firms currently see the technology as the primary driver of investment.
The key findings in the report are:
- 87% of firms expect front-office technology investment to increase over the next five years, with 33% expecting a significant increase of more than 20% and none expecting a decrease
- 89% say the pace of market and technology change is creating uncertainty in their front-office investment decisions, with 36% saying it does so significantly
- Just 15% of firms describe their front-office technology as advanced, while 57% run modern components alongside significant legacy systems and 28% are predominantly legacy
- 60% cite the complexity of migrating from legacy systems as a significant or critical challenge to their front-office initiatives, ahead of cost and budget constraints
- 68% cite volume growth and scalability as a primary driver of investment, followed by cost reduction and operational efficiency (55%) and expansion into new asset classes or markets (53%)
- Resilience is the most important non-functional requirement for 74% of firms, ahead of low latency and high throughput at 59%
- 42% take a hybrid approach to procurement, combining third-party technology platforms with significant in-house development, while operational resilience and control (34%) and total cost of ownership (31%) matter most when choosing between build, buy and hybrid
- 35% say regulatory change such as DORA and MiCA is a significant or very significant driver of front-office technology investment
“Sell-side firms and trading venues know they need to invest to keep pace with rising volumes, new markets and new technologies. But they are doing so against a backdrop of genuine uncertainty about the future of market structure and technologies such as AI,” said Ross Lancaster, head of research at Acuiti.
“This report makes clear that technological sophistication and the ability to be competitive go hand in hand. The firms that are least burdened by legacy infrastructure are the ones most confident that they can compete over the next five years, and that gap is likely to widen as the modernisation wave gathers pace.”
Ian Salmon, Head of Accelerator Programme at Adaptive, said: “Uncertainty should not stifle innovation. Modular technology stacks allow firms to upgrade or replace individual components as requirements evolve, rather than committing to a wholesale transformation every time the market changes.
“The safest migrations are not big-bang replacements. They are phased programmes that isolate risk, keep critical trading services running and create points to validate performance before moving further. With the right architecture and delivery plan, firms can modernise incrementally – reducing operational and migration risk while building flexibility.”
The full whitepaper, Riding the coming modernisation wave: Front-office technology investment in a fast-moving world, is available to download here.
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For more information, contact Ross Lancaster at Acuiti
Tel.: +44 (0) 203 998 9687
Email: rosslancaster@acuiti.io
About Acuiti
Acuiti is a management intelligence platform serving senior executives across the global derivatives, ETFs and fixed income markets. Through its exclusive expert networks, Acuiti gathers anonymised insight from banks, brokers, proprietary trading firms and buy-side institutions, publishing benchmarking data, quarterly sentiment analysis and bespoke research on the trends shaping the industry. Founded in 2019, Acuiti brings greater transparency to operations across global markets. Visit acuiti.io.
About Adaptive
Adaptive is the leading expert in custom trading technology solutions, crafting bespoke front-office platforms across asset classes for firms wanting to own their technology stack to differentiate. Through a unique combination of capital markets expertise and world-leading Aeron® technology, Adaptive creates competitive advantage for financial services firms.
Adaptive has delivered more than 265 custom trading technology projects over the past decade, with experience designing and building highly performant and resilient systems, modernising complex trading architectures, and enabling trading in public cloud and hybrid environments. Aeron® is the global standard for high-throughput, low-latency, resilient trading systems, on-premise and in the cloud.
With offices in London, New York, Barcelona, Montréal and Manila, Adaptive provides global support across major financial markets. For more information, visit WeAreAdaptive.com and Aeron.io.