Location is Symptomatic

Location has always mattered in capital markets – whether it’s proximity to the exchange, co-location for speed, or access to talent. But increasingly, location is becoming symptomatic. It reflects where technology decisions haven’t moved forward, where infrastructure has ossified, and where strategic inertia has taken hold. In many cases, firms aren’t positioned where they want to be – but where their systems allow them to be.

Across the sector, firms are contending with deeply embedded complexity. Mainframes still underpin core banking services. Trading platforms are patched instead of replaced. Post-trade processes rely on brittle, siloed workflows. These systems were built for stability, not agility – and while they’ve endured, they now resist change at precisely the moment change is required. The gravitational pull of legacy infrastructure is strong, and its most subtle cost is how it limits the questions we allow ourselves to ask.

The principle of continuous improvement offers a way forward – but only if we treat it as more than an operational philosophy. In capital markets, iteration often comes under pressure from risk aversion, regulatory scrutiny, and the expectation that systems should be both bulletproof and invisible. Yet, the firms making meaningful progress are the ones that view continuous improvement as cultural. It’s less about scale transformations, more about systems that evolve naturally – learning from each interaction, absorbing feedback, and reducing friction over time.

That shift depends on how we think about infrastructure. Too often, it’s framed as a sunk cost – an anchor to maintain. But there’s value in treating infrastructure as a design language. Like any language, it encodes assumptions, defines how teams communicate, and shapes what’s even possible. In the trading environment, for example, modular systems and real-time data fabrics are doing more than improving performance – they’re enabling entirely new operating models.

To get there, we need to draft new needs. Not retrofit existing ones, but define what’s required from the ground up. Operational resilience isn’t a checkbox – it’s an outcome of design. Data interoperability isn’t a nice-to-have – it’s a precondition for effective risk management. Regulation and innovation are no longer in tension – they’re co-drivers of system design.
There’s no single blueprint. But there is a clear direction: away from rigid foundations, toward systems that are adaptive by default. If the past few years have shown us anything, it’s that fixed positions – whether physical or architectural – are rarely where the value lies. What’s needed now is movement. And movement begins with the willingness to rethink what’s been assumed permanent.