In March 2026, the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) launched TradeAgent — a centralised post-trade processing platform for OTC derivatives, built to eliminate fragmentation, standardise data, and streamline workflows across the trade lifecycle.
The platform was designed in collaboration with buy and sell side institutions, and is powered by LSEG’s market infrastructure expertise, working to replace the industry’s disparate, duplicative processes with a single source of trade and agreement data.
Annabel Harrison, head of agent services, Post Trade Solutions at LSEG, discusses the platform, diving into what spurred its invention, how it reduces costs and risks by leveraging technology, and what differentiates the platform from other post-trade workflows.
Teamwork makes the dream work
“TradeAgent was developed in close collaboration with a consortium of 10 leading banks and buy side firms,” Harrison notes before highlighting that the range of firms ensured the solution would be practical, scalable, and aligned with ever-evolving market needs. These firms include: Barclays, J.P. Morgan, BNP Paribas, and Citi. According to Harrison, the development of TradeAgent was directly informed by client experience and feedback, ensuring its effectiveness.
When asked about the impact she anticipates the platform will have on the market, Harrison described it as a “genuine alternative” to the typical confirmation process, providing access to centralised, authoritative data that works to drive standardisation and automation across workflows while removing fragmentation as the market moves towards greater efficiency and resiliency across the post-trade lifecycle.
Setting it apart from existing post-trade workflows, TradeAgent enables greater consistency, automation, and resilience, providing an end-to-end processing solution that replaces traditionally fragmented, point-to-point systems with a single, standardised workflow and an authoritative source of trade and agreement data.
Harrison details that the platform includes an alternative confirmation process that removes duplicative and manual steps. By standardising confirmations, automating processes, and bringing the efficiencies of cleared workflows into the bilateral derivatives space, TradeAgent is designed to significantly reduces breaks, disputes, and operational risk while lowering processing costs across the lifecycle of equity and interest rate swaps.
Cutting costs in interest rate swaps
As Plato famously said “necessity is the mother of invention”, and with firms needing to reduce costs and risks associated with cleared and bilateral derivative processing, as well as for equity and interest rate swaps, platforms such as TradeAgent are being born.
Harrison states that TradeAgent is built around a centralised, authoritative data store, replacing usually fragmented systems, and significantly reducing manual processing, error rates, breaks, and valuation disputes. By bringing the efficiencies and risk controls typically associated with cleared workflows into the bilateral space, the accuracy of cashflow calculations improves and mitigates counterparty and funding risk through more consistent margin and settlement processes.
She also highlights that the platform’s open, end-to-end architecture removes duplicative workflows, supports automation at scale, and lowers both operational and long-term technology costs as volumes, products, and regulatory demands evolve.
Fitting in
TradeAgent is the newest tool in LSEG’s broader post-trade, data, and analytics toolbox, joining platforms such as Acadia, Quantile, and SwapAgent — all of which work together to enable greater standardisation, automation, and connectivity across margin, optimisation, and risk management. According to Harrison, this advances the firm’s ambition to simplify workflows, centralise data, and drive efficiency across derivatives markets.
“Together, these services create a foundation that supports more efficient processing, improved capital efficiency, and future innovation across LSEG’s market infrastructure and analytics ecosystem.”
She also highlights that in October 2025, LSEG announced an aggregate £170 million investment in the Post Trade Solutions business from 11 global banks, underscoring the opportunity to bring material efficiencies across capital, risk, and operations to the bilateral OTC derivatives market, and continued collaboration with the market to deliver this.
The future of TradeAgent
As the market becomes more AI driven and automated, Harrison expects the service to continue to expand and be multi-asset beyond rates and equities. She says this is due to TradeAgent operating using an open, scalable platform that will enable current and future products and services to operate directly off a central, authoritative data store.
Harrison concludes that LSEG will continue to respond to client demand as well as market changes: “We will continue to see how the market evolves and work with our clients to see where they want us to go next.”
Image: stock.adobe.com/Luciano Mortula-LGM 
.jpg)