Fragmented surveillance, amplified risk

Market surveillance has shifted from a back-office function to a board-level priority. Regulators now expect continuous, real-time supervision across trading, communications and employee activity. Firms relying on fragmented tools face blind spots, weaker alert quality and growing regulatory exposure – at a moment when enforcement is intensifying globally.
The data underscores the urgency. The SEC obtained $17.9 billion in monetary relief in fiscal year 2025 – including $7.2 billion in civil penalties – targeting market manipulation, insider trading and spoofing (SEC, April 2026). ESMA recorded more than 970 sanctions and measures across EU member states in 2024, with aggregate fines exceeding EUR 100 million under MAR and MiFID II (ESMA, October 2025).
For Chief Compliance Officers and Risk Directors, the gap between what regulators expect and what fragmented, reactive systems can deliver isn’t a compliance inconvenience. It’s a material business risk.

Why the surveillance standard has shifted

Rules-based detection of trade data served firms well when volumes were lower and regulators focused on retrospective oversight. Neither condition holds true today.
Modern markets generate millions of trades, orders and communications daily. Manipulative strategies span multiple venues and asset classes, so patterns invisible in one system emerge only when the full picture is available. Algorithmic trading has amplified both the volume and speed of potential abuse. And regulators have shifted from retrospective review toward proactive, real-time supervision – expecting firms to prevent breaches before they occur and explain decisions with precision.
The global trade surveillance market reflects this shift: from $1.7 billion in 2024, it’s projected to reach $5.2 billion by 2030, a 20.2% compound annual growth rate (Grand View Research, March 2025).

What fragmentation actually costs

The risk for most firms isn’t a lack of surveillance tools; it’s too many disconnected ones.
Pre-trade controls, post-trade monitoring, communications surveillance and employee compliance typically operate in separate systems managed by different teams. Each offers isolated capabilities, creating blind spots when an issue spans all systems.
In practice: A trader’s order patterns may appear unremarkable in a post-trade system. Yet separately stored communications data could reveal coordination with an external counterparty. Neither system can identify the pattern on its own. That demands an integrated view.
Siloed operations also degrades alert quality. Independently calibrated thresholds produce noise that overwhelms analyst teams, pulling attention away from genuine risks. And when a regulator asks for evidenced supervision, reconstructing a coherent audit trail across disconnected systems can be slow, incomplete and hard to defend.

What integrated surveillance looks like in practice

Strengthening trading integrity across asset classes

FIS® Market Surveillance is a market abuse detection capability within the FIS® Capital Markets Compliance Suite. It monitors for insider trading and market manipulation across asset classes and all firm, portfolio, trader, algo and client trading including wash sales, spoofing and layering.
The solution offers three important capabilities: a comprehensive rules library that is updated regularly; analytical and case management tools to assist analysts from initial alerts through investigation; and end-to-end audit trails that support regulatory review. Users can also fine-tune the application as obligations and the regulatory landscape evolve.

FIS® Supervision Compliance is a broker supervision capability within the same suite. It helps firms mitigate risk from sales practices issues and potential fraud including high-risk and recidivist brokers, senior investor abuse, AML controls, product suitability mismatches and excessive trading.
FIS® Employee Compliance Manager is a robust component of the compliance suite. This offering enables firms to monitor and manage employee activities. With tools for tracking personal trading, outside business interests and conflicts of interest, Employee Compliance Manager helps firms stay aligned with regulatory policies while promoting ethical conduct.
Together, these solutions provide firms with the ability to monitor, detect and address potential regulatory breaches in real time. Firms can streamline compliance checks to adhere to global trading regulations while reducing manual intervention. Capital Markets Compliance Suite closes the surveillance gap with full visibility into trades and supervision within a unified control framework.

How AI sharpens surveillance precision

Static rules detect only the patterns they were designed to identify, and can miss new tactics and early signs of coordinated abuse. AI prioritizes risk, reducing false positives and accelerating investigations.
FIS Trading Compliance Manager is a multi-asset compliance platform hosted on Snowflake and Amazon Web Services. It provides the foundation for rules-based monitoring and supervisory controls with AI capabilities being built in. Firms that prioritize clean data, unified controls and traceable audit trails will be better positioned when AI-supported compliance becomes the standard.

A practical path forward

Closing the surveillance gap doesn’t require an all-or-nothing overhaul. Here are a few strategic steps to take:

• Unify before you expand.
  A single platform for surveillance, case management and reporting gives teams a consistent source of truth.

• Build for throughput.
  The platform needs to be able adapt to the complexity of growing trade volume and asset-classes.
  
  
• Configure to your risk profile.
  Modular, configurable rules and thresholds allow capabilities to expand without requiring a full rebuild.
  
  
• Prioritize precision over volume.
  Signal-to-noise ratio is a control quality measure while analysts should be focused on the highest-priority risks.
  
  
• Prepare for risk-based oversight.
  By adapting rules-based foundations toward AI-supported analysis, firms can adapt to changing supervisory expectations.
  
  

From compliance obligation to executive confidence

Spotting isolated violations no longer satisfies regulators who expect complete, evidenced oversight of every trade and every trader. The firms that can demonstrate thoroughness and consistency in their compliance efforts will fare better than those that simply employ the most alerts. Unified, explainable surveillance turns a burden into a controllable discipline – and compliance from a defensive obligation into a source of executive confidence.
Connect with an FIS specialist to explore how the FIS® Capital Markets Compliance Suite can help your firm meet the completeness standard.