Can you explore the drive behind the inception of Nuvo Prime, and the journey to its creation?
Nuvo Prime was launched in 2017 with a clear objective: to build a specialist prime finance platform designed for the cloud from day one.
The business was founded on a simple observation. Prime finance had become increasingly technology-intensive, yet firms were often reliant on expensive internal builds or legacy vendor platforms that were difficult to maintain, heavily customised, and not designed specifically for the complexity of prime brokerage. There was no modern platform focused on the full lifecycle requirements of prime finance, particularly synthetic prime brokerage.
The opportunity was informed by years of experience building and integrating swap platforms. Having worked extensively with traditional architectures, we understood both the operational demands of prime finance and the limitations of existing technology approaches.
The attraction was not simply moving systems to the cloud, but using modern technologies to build something fundamentally better. The goal was to create a platform that could scale efficiently in Amazon Web Services (AWS), while providing the flexibility, resilience, and automation required by prime finance businesses.
The platform journey began with portfolio swaps, expanded into total return swaps, and more recently into cash prime brokerage. Alongside the product suite, Nuvo Prime has established a global support model across London, Singapore, and Canada, backed by experienced product and technical teams.
Today, the company remains focused on the same core principle: delivering specialist prime finance technology built by people who understand the business. That approach has helped clients launch new prime services, modernise existing operations, and reduce the cost and complexity associated with maintaining legacy in-house systems.
In an increasingly evolving digital landscape, how is the use of cloud reshaping the prime brokerage market? How are cloud-first platforms redefining operating models?
Cloud is reshaping prime brokerage by changing both the economics of technology ownership and the way firms operate.
When Nuvo Prime launched, cloud adoption for core trading and lifecycle platforms was still relatively new within financial services. Today, cloud-native technology is increasingly viewed as the preferred architecture for firms entering or modernising the prime finance market.
The commercial benefits are significant. Rather than maintaining infrastructure sized for peak demand, firms can scale resources as required, provision environments more quickly, and reduce the operational overhead associated with large infrastructure estates.
Just as importantly, the cloud is transforming operating models. Cloud-first platforms support faster onboarding, more efficient testing, and continuous delivery of product enhancements. At Nuvo Prime, clients operate on a single configurable codebase with regular monthly releases, allowing them to benefit from ongoing innovation without disruptive upgrade programmes.
For prime finance businesses, where automation, lifecycle processing, margin calculations, reporting, and operational control are critical, cloud-native platforms provide the flexibility and resilience needed to support growing transaction volumes and increasingly complex workflows.
Ultimately, cloud allows firms to spend less time managing technology infrastructure and more time focusing on financing, risk management, client service, and business growth.
With prime finance being at the heart of the organisation, how do you view the current prime brokerage landscape?
Prime brokerage remains a dynamic and strategically important market, with financing at the centre of the business model. Demand continues to be shaped by hedge fund activity, market volatility, securities lending, swaps, margin financing, and the broader need for efficient access to leverage and market exposure.
Prime brokerage is a financing business, with demand following hedge fund activity and the appetite for leverage. But as competition grows, what sets firms apart is no longer simply access to financing, but how efficiently and reliably firms can deliver it. Legacy technology can become a constraint: heavily customised platforms often become harder to maintain, slower to change, and more exposed to regression risk with each release. At the same time, swap and financing activity has increased substantially in recent years, placing pressure on platforms to handle higher throughput and greater operational complexity. With greater scale comes a need for technology that can process large volumes, maintain clean data, support auditability, and deliver reliable operational control.
Clients are also looking for broader and more flexible prime finance capabilities. They increasingly want access to both cash and synthetic financing, while benefitting from strong lifecycle processing, transparent reporting, efficient margin management, and support for complex strategies across multiple markets. That is putting additional pressure on prime brokers to modernise the technology stack that sits underneath the business.
Regulation is another major influence. Compliance is no longer something that can be managed around the edges of the platform: it needs to be embedded in the processing itself. Regulatory reporting, resilience, auditability, data lineage, and control evidence are now expected features. Requirements such as the US rules on withholding tax (26 U.S.C. § 871(m)), Italian Financial Transaction Tax, short selling rules in Europe and the UK, and broader supervisory focus on leverage and counterparty exposure, all reinforce the need for robust systems.
Control, risk, and margin management are also increasingly central. Firms need transparency around margin methodologies, collateral optimisation, exposure management, and stress testing. That is important not only for regulatory compliance, but also for internal governance and client confidence.
Macroeconomic conditions add another layer. Interest rate changes, higher financing costs, volatility, and balance sheet availability all influence client behaviour and prime broker economics. In that environment, technology must help firms operate securely, price accurately, understand the sources of risk and manage them effectively at scale, all with a minimum of operational friction.
For Nuvo Prime, the direction of travel is clear. Prime finance businesses need more integrated, more automated, and more adaptable technology. The firms that succeed will be those that combine strong client service with scalable infrastructure, transparent controls, and the ability to respond quickly as the market evolves.
Providing your offerings to clients in Asia, the Americas, and Europe, are there notable differences in how these regions approach prime brokerage? How do client needs differ?
While client requirements still vary across Asia, Europe, and the Americas, we are seeing firms converge on the same technology priorities. Regional differences remain, driven by regulation, market structure, market access, settlement practices, and tax regimes, but clients are increasingly prioritising flexible, scalable platforms that can support long-term growth.
In Europe, clients often place particular emphasis on regulation, transparency, and operational resilience. In Asia, those priorities are combined with the additional complexity of market access restrictions, differing settlement practices and local market requirements, which have historically been important drivers for the adoption of synthetic financing. Regulatory reporting and tax obligations continue to evolve, increasing the need for systems that can adapt quickly to changing requirements across multiple jurisdictions. Recent measures, including the French Finance Act 2025, highlight how quickly regulatory and tax requirements can evolve, adding further operational complexity for firms operating globally.
In North America, many prime brokerage businesses have mature cash prime brokerage operations, while the balance between cash and synthetic capabilities often reflects each firm’s history and strategic priorities. As firms modernise their technology and broaden their product offering, we are seeing growing demand for solutions that can replace legacy infrastructure and support both cash and synthetic prime brokerage through a single platform.
Across our global client base, we have consistently seen trading volumes increase as firms expand into new markets, onboard new customers and introduce new products. As a result, they expect platforms to be designed for growth from day one.
We are also seeing a shift in how firms view technology providers. Clients are increasingly looking for technology partners rather than simply software providers. They want partners that can evolve alongside their business, respond quickly to changing market conditions and regulatory requirements, and support their long-term growth.
That is why we have built a platform that is global in scale while remaining flexible enough to accommodate local market practices, regulations, and differences in client requirements. Clients do not want technology to limit how their business evolves. Whether they are entering new markets, launching new products, or supporting higher trading volumes, they should not have to rethink the technology underpinning their business.
Looking forward, what will be top of mind for Nuvo Prime over the next 12 months? Can you share what projects may be in the pipeline?
Over the next 12 months, Nuvo Prime’s priorities will centre on continued product expansion, client onboarding and further investment in platform capability.
A major focus will be the continued development of cash prime brokerage. Following the launch of the cash prime brokerage offering in 2024, Nuvo Prime has continued to expand the platform, including the addition of FX spots and forwards, US equity options and arranged financing.
Client onboarding will also remain a key priority. Nuvo Prime is in active discussions with a range of institutions, from larger firms to more specialised businesses, looking to adopt a modern prime finance platform. That reflects the broader market trend of firms seeking to move away from fragmented or legacy technology stacks.
The product roadmap will continue to be shaped by client feedback and evolving regulatory requirements. Enhancements across both swaps and cash prime brokerage will focus on practical business needs, operational control, reporting, and workflow automation.
Data and analytics will also be an important area of investment. Nuvo Prime is developing its data-lake and warehouse strategy to improve client self-service, regulatory reporting, and management information across the large volumes of data generated by swaps and cash prime brokerage workflows. This is increasingly important as clients look to extract more insight from their operating data and reduce manual reporting effort.
Longer term, Nuvo Prime plans to expand its existing securities lending capabilities, with the ambition of offering a complete, integrated, and seamless prime finance solution across cash, synthetic, and securities lending workflows in a unified platform.
About Nuvo Prime
Nuvo Prime was created to bring specialist prime finance technology into the cloud era. From the outset, the focus has been on delivering a modern platform supported by people who understand the operational realities of prime brokerage.
That combination of technology and domain expertise remains central to the business. Prime finance is a complex environment that requires deep understanding of financing, margin, lifecycle processing, corporate actions, tax, reporting, and operational controls. Successful platforms need to correctly embed those realities rather than apply generic software approaches.
The roadmap for Nuvo Prime is strongly influenced by client feedback, ensuring the platform continues to evolve in line with real business requirements. Combined with its global support model across London, Singapore, and Canada, this enables the firm to provide both continuous product development and follow-the-sun, business-focused client support.
Ultimately, Nuvo Prime’s goal is to provide stable, scalable, and continuously evolving infrastructure that allows clients to focus on financing, risk management, client service, and business growth.
As the industry continues to modernise, the firm believes prime finance increasingly benefits from specialist platforms rather than bespoke technology estates. By bringing portfolio swaps, total return swaps and cash prime brokerage together within a single environment, Nuvo Prime helps clients reduce complexity, improve operational efficiency, and build scalable prime finance businesses with confidence.
Next interview →
Goldman Sachs
When opportunity knocks
Image: Nuvo Prime 
