Key Insights
- Complexity is now a strategic risk: Financial institutions are facing a convergence of regulatory divergence, digital disruption and operational inefficiencies that threaten scalability and competitiveness.
- Balancing resilience and growth is essential: Firms must modernize infrastructure and streamline operations while remaining agile enough to pursue innovation and expansion.
- Technology must be paired with strategy: Intelligent financial technology solutions are most effective when aligned with evolving regulatory demands, market dynamics and long-term client goals.
- Award-winning solutions reflect real-world impact: Nasdaq’s recent industry recognition highlights how targeted investments in stress testing, surveillance, post-trade and digital assets are helping clients navigate today’s challenges with confidence.
In a year marked by regulatory recalibration, digital acceleration and rising systemic risk, financial institutions are rethinking how they scale. Complexity—driven by regulatory divergence, technological disruption and rising client expectations—is not just a side effect of growth; it’s a barrier with many firms unable to remain resilient and competitive.
According to Nasdaq’s Cost of Complexity research, the industry is grappling with a widening “growth gap,” where the pace of complicatedness is outstripping firms’ ability to scale efficiently. Complicatedness—the accumulation of internal procedures, layers of approval, coordination structures and other organizational add-ons in response to external complexity—has grown dramatically, often outpacing the complexity itself. This challenge is especially acute for banks, buyside firms and financial market infrastructures (FMIs) and these firms are under pressure to modernize., rethink how they operate, invest and innovate.
At the heart of this transformation is a strategic imperative: to balance resilience with growth. Financial institutions must modernize their infrastructure, simplify their operations and adopt intelligent financial technology solutions that reduce friction, without compromising on performance or compliance.
Financial institutions must modernize their infrastructure, simplify their operations and adopt intelligent financial technology solutions that reduce friction, without compromising on performance or compliance.
How Nasdaq is Investing in Resilience
Resilience is no longer just about risk mitigation—it’s about building adaptive, future-ready infrastructure. Nasdaq is continuously investing to ensure clients can withstand economic shocks, address regulatory changes and mitigate operational risks.
1st Half 2025: Award-Winning Solutions to Strengthen Resilience
Stress Testing
Best Solution for Stress Testing, 2025 RegTech Insight Awards Europe
Why it matters now: With regulators reassessing capital frameworks and liquidity buffers under the evolving Basel regulation and other initiatives globally and new treasury-led oversight, firms must demonstrate more dynamic, scenario-based stress testing capabilities across various regulatory environments including:
- DFAST (U.S. Dodd-Frank Act Stress Testing)
- CCAR (U.S. Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review)
- PRA (UK Prudential Regulation Authority)
- EBA (European Banking Authority)
- OSFI (Canada’s Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions)
- ICAAP (Internal Capital Adequacy Assessment Process)
- ILAAP (Internal Liquidity Adequacy Assessment Process)
How Nasdaq helps: Delivered via AxiomSL, these solutions help institutions navigate complex risk environments by modeling shocks across key risk types, applying tailored scenarios across portfolios and geographies, and evaluating impacts on capital, funding and performance. With integrated data, audit-ready workflows and intuitive dashboards, teams can collaborate confidently and act decisively. With Nasdaq, firms turn stress testing from a compliance task into a strategic tool for resilience and planning.
Back-Office Simplification
Best Back Office Platform, 2025 WatersTechnology Asia Awards
Why it matters now: As financial institutions face mounting pressure to reduce operational costs and accelerate time-to-market, back-office modernization is a strategic priority. The shift toward modular, cloud-native infrastructure is also reshaping how firms approach post-trade operations.
How Nasdaq helps: Our Calypso platform simplifies and automates post-trade workflows, reducing operational drag and enabling faster onboarding, reconciliation and settlement – critical for firms scaling across asset classes and geographies.
Market Surveillance
Best Sell-Side Market Surveillance Product, Waters Technology Sell-Side Technology Awards 2025
9-time winner (2014-2019, 2023-2025)
Why it matters now: With global regulators intensifying scrutiny on market manipulation, AI-driven surveillance is essential. The rise of digital assets, cross-market trading and cross-product manipulation adds further complexity.
How Nasdaq helps: Our advanced surveillance tools detect anomalies—150+ alert scenarios across 45+ marketplaces, across all asset classes—helping firms maintain market integrity, meet compliance obligations and respond swiftly to emerging threats.
Driving Growth with Nasdaq Financial Technology Solutions
Growth is essential for financial institutions to remain competitive and capitalize on new opportunities. Our investments in growth-focused solutions enable our clients to explore innovative markets, diversify their portfolios and scale sustainably.
Growth is essential for financial institutions to remain competitive and capitalize on new opportunities.
1st Half 2025: Award-Winning Solutions to Empower Growth
Digital Assets
Best Digital Assets Surveillance Services Provider, Future of Finance Awards for Digital Asset Exchanges
Why it matters now: With the SEC approving a new wave of spot crypto ETFs and tokenized funds gaining traction across real estate, private equity and money markets, institutional demand for secure, regulated access to digital assets is surging.
How Nasdaq helps: Our digital asset surveillance solutions are purpose-built to combine domain expertise, scalable technology and a deep understanding of—empowering clients to stay ahead of sophisticated manipulation schemes and maintain regulatory compliance in the disruptive crypto space.
Post-Trade Excellence
Post-trade Solution of the Year, FOW International Awards
Why it matters now: As trading volumes rise across both traditional and digital markets, firms are under pressure to modernize clearing and settlement systems to reduce latency, cost and risk.
How Nasdaq helps: Our post-trade platforms—Nasdaq Eqlipse Clearing and Nasdaq Eqlipse CSD—deliver high-throughput, real-time processing with built-in support for multi-asset workflows, helping institutions streamline operations and scale efficiently in a hybrid market environment.
Infrastructure Development
Central Banking Award for Financial Markets Infrastructure Development
Why it matters now: Central banks are prioritizing resilient, cloud-native infrastructure to safeguard financial stability while embracing technological innovation.
How Nasdaq helps: We’re building the next generation of financial market systems—modular, secure, and future-proofed—to help institutions adapt to evolving regulatory demands and market structures. This award acknowledges Nasdaq Calypso’s role in building the next generation of reserve and monetary policy management systems for the central banking ecosystem, integrated and automated, fostering efficiency and excellence.
As the digital economy evolves, we were recognized as Best Digital Assets Surveillance Services Provider at the Future of Finance Awards for Digital Asset Exchanges, highlighting our innovation in enabling secure, scalable access to digital asset markets.
Client Success in a Complex Financial Infrastructure Landscape
Technology alone doesn’t eliminate complexity. Firms across the industry are recognizing the value of services that accelerate time-to-value, reduce implementation risk and ensure solutions are aligned with industry best practices. From clear delivery models to future-proofed integrations and expert guidance, a service-based approach with the right partner can play a critical role in helping institutions realize the full potential of their technology investments.
Our approach is grounded in this philosophy, ensuring that every solution is not only powerful, but also practical, scalable and aligned to our clients’ long-term goals. Our unwavering dedication to client success is reflected in our recognition as Best Professional Services Provider at the FTF News Technology Innovation Awards 2025, which showcases the expertise and partnership we bring to every client engagement.
Our approach is grounded in this philosophy, ensuring that every solution is not only powerful, but also practical, scalable and aligned to our clients’ long-term goals.
Looking Ahead: Empowering the Future of Financial Services
These awards are more than accolades; they serve as proof points of how we’re helping clients navigate complexity with confidence. As we continue to invest in our technology, services and people, we remain focused on empowering financial institutions to thrive in a world where resilience and growth must go hand in hand.
As we look ahead to the second half of 2025, Nasdaq remains committed to helping clients turn complexity into competitive advantage.
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