Welcome to the latest edition of At the Forefront: Fintech Conversations!
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In this episode, Forefront Head of Content Sam Belden sits down with Melissa Watras, Director of Product at Trillium Surveyor, and Ann Cendejas, Chief Compliance Officer at Tickrs Clearing, to discuss how firms are preparing for the next stage of market oversight as surveillance and best execution analytics come under increasing regulatory and operational scrutiny. The conversation explores what is driving this shift, how expectations have evolved, and why many firms are rethinking long-standing assumptions about their oversight workflows.
Melissa and Ann begin by outlining the forces reshaping today’s trading landscape. Markets are faster and more fragmented, and regulators expect firms not only to surface potential issues, but to explain the rationale behind their decisions with far greater clarity. Many oversight frameworks, built initially for a slower, more centralized market, are now strained by new rules, broader risk categories, and a heightened focus on transparency. Both guests note that compliance teams are confronting rising demands for fraud detection, manipulative trading, AML controls and account intrusion, making it essential to revisit internal processes, training, escalation paths and the technology that supports them.
Historically, surveillance and best execution analytics have lived in separate systems and separate workflows, often connected only when a regulatory inquiry or escalation required teams to reconstruct the bigger picture. That fragmented approach can slow reviews and obscure important context, forcing analysts to spend time stitching together routing, timing, venue and execution data before accurate analysis can begin. As Melissa notes, the work gets done, but the friction is unnecessary – and increasingly incompatible with the speed and consistency regulators expect.
The discussion then turns to Trillium Surveyor’s decision to bring both functions into a single unified platform. By consolidating surveillance and best execution analytics into one environment, the Surveyor team created a shared foundation that aligns trading, compliance, and operations teams around the same data and the same context. This integrated approach eliminates the back-and-forth of fragmented systems, accelerates investigations, and ensures teams are interpreting information collectively rather than in isolation. Ann shares how this unified model has benefited Tickrs Clearing—streamlining collaboration among a smaller team and allowing the firm to send its data once and apply it across multiple oversight needs.
Looking ahead, both guests expect oversight obligations to continue growing more demanding over the next several years. Longer trading hours, a broader product mix, and increased variability in activity will raise the volume and complexity of data that firms must review. Regulators will also continue emphasizing defendability—driving the need for systems that support faster, more consistent, and more explainable decision-making. Melissa and Ann agree that the next stage of oversight will be defined by collaborative, data-driven workflows that allow clearing and trading teams to interpret risks together rather than in isolation.
For more conversations with fintech and capital markets leaders, explore the At the Forefront podcast archive or on our YouTube channel.
See below for a breakdown of what was discussed. Happy listening!
Timestamps:
1:40 – What’s driving today’s shift in oversight expectations
6:45 – Why firms are rethinking the separation of surveillance and best execution
11:30 – How Tickrs and Surveyor collaborate using shared data
13:45 – Preparing for the next era of market oversight
16:00 – Opportunities for clearing and trading teams to work together more effectively