How Can the Buy-Side Reclaim Control in Listed Derivatives Block Trading?
From Friction to Flow: InTick Is Transforming Listed Derivatives Block Trading for the Buy-Side
By James Goater, Co-Founder and CEO
For decades, the financial markets have prided themselves on a relentless march towards electronic execution. Equities, foreign exchange, and liquid cash fixed income have been transformed by automated matching engines, low-latency APIs, and sophisticated algorithmic routing.
Yet, in one critical corner of the financial ecosystem, very little has changed. Listed derivatives block trading remains one of the final frontiers characterised by manual friction, and fragmented workflows. Sourcing and executing large-in-size block trades routinely forces the most sophisticated trading desks to abandon automated systems, pick up the phone, and navigate a web of manual processes.
This is more than an operational headache. It is an expensive structural roadblock for the evolution of the market. When block execution is manual, opaque, and relationship-driven, the buy-side pays the price in execution slippage, data leakage and administrative overheads and no way to quantify subsequently.
At InTick, we have built a broker-neutral block trading platform, designed to defend trading intentions and deepen available liquidity. We don't ask you to reinvent your workflows. Instead, we are making the execution fully electronic and quantifiable, giving the buy-side visibility and control over how trade details are shared.
The Challenges are Universal: Structural Friction is Holding Back Buy-Side Performance
Whether you are a CTA, quant hedge fund, global macro fund, or central trading desk within an asset manager, listed derivatives block execution exposes any strategy to the same structural friction in four different forms.
The Information Leakage Trap
Traditionally, sourcing block liquidity has required a degree of disclosure around identity and trading direction to brokers and liquidity providers. This can create a broader information footprint, particularly in fast-moving markets, where prices may shift before a block has been fully executed. Where firms are highly directional due to the firm's structure or a strong market view, and this is known to the market, this type of information leakage can become increasingly damaging to performance..
Forced Manual Workarounds in a Systematic Era
Even the most automated execution pipelines can become manual at the block layer, as certain liquidity can only be sourced via 'offline' workflows to find and negotiate prices. This introduces execution delays, latency and a higher risk of manual errors with no process to systematically record the data, and so the block cannot be benchmarked.
The Risk-First Incentive Mismatch
Traditional RFQ platforms and Inter-Dealer Brokers (IDBs) are primarily designed to match risk prices, which can result in the buy-side crossing spreads on both sides of a transaction. Peer-to-peer matching at, or near, the mid-price has historically been less central to these models. This is not a criticism of the service, which is valuable, just that it is only solving one element of the overall problem.
Post-Trade Operational Bottlenecks
When buy-side firms manage complex, multi-account allocations, bypassing core executing brokers to potentially trade directly with non-bank market makers creates real operational friction. Bilateral trades trigger US exchange-level regulatory limit issues, such as Risk Allowance Value (RAV) limits, leading to clearing breaks, late-block compliance warnings, and late-night scramble phone calls.
The Path to Frictionless, Protected Liquidity
While these structural challenges are universal, and their impact varies depending on specific mandates, our answer to all four is the same.
InTick is a broker-neutral network that acts as a secure buffer between trading intent and market execution. The InTick platform is built to solve these pain points, so each desk can focus on solving the areas that constrain it the most.
By making anonymity a key feature of the InTick platform, firms can now protect the confidentiality of their trading intentions while accessing competitive pricing and an audit trail of each element of the trade. To cater to diverse styles of execution, InTick offers three distinct, additive ways to engage with block liquidity:
Client-to-Client Matching: Match buy-side block interest directly across the market at the exchange Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) mid-price. Orders rest in a fully hidden capacity, allowing participants to cross blocks cleanly without market impact, information leakage, or execution spread costs.
Streamed Prices: Trade instantly and directly with liquidity providers via streamed, executable block prices without notifying the market.
Request-for-Quote (RFQ): Source directly from selected liquidity providers via bespoke, two-way risk pricing whilst maintaining control over how identity and trading information is shared..
Proving Best Execution
In listed derivatives block trading, the days of having to accept high slippage, manual operational risk, and data leakage as 'the cost of doing business' are ending.
By standardising the block execution process, InTick does not just simplify workflows; it provides proof of your execution performance and informs future decisions. The platform delivers complete transactional data and full audit trails, feeding directly into your Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA) so that best execution can be evidenced rather than asserted.
Founded by former market participants and built by deep technology specialists, InTick combines first-hand market expertise with the purpose-built innovation that puts firms in control. Because we understand the complex, high-touch realities of listed derivatives, we have designed a platform that seamlessly replicates the workflows the market is familiar with, whilst stripping out the friction.
If one of those four problems is the one that costs your desk most, we would like to know which. Please get in touch.