Aker delivers real-time post trade API for new European equity derivatives clearing service

The Client

Cboe Clear Europe is Cboe’s European clearing house, providing post-trade clearing services for equity derivatives. As it expanded into new European clearing services, it needed a secure, real-time integration capability so clearing members could manage trades reliably, efficiently, and at scale.

The Challenge

Launching a new European equity derivatives clearing service required a real-time Post-Trade API capable of supporting a diverse ecosystem of clearing members,market participants, and internal platforms - while meeting the demanding standards of a regulated financial market infrastructure.

Key requirements included:

·        Real-time,standards-based interfaces for post-trade management and lifecycle events

·        Industry messaging support, including FIX and FIXML

·        Real-time integration with an incumbent clearing platform

·        Operational resilience, security, and compliance aligned to regulated FMI expectations

·        Rapid on boarding of new participants without escalating point-to-point integration complexity

The Solution

Aker designed and delivered a secure,real-time Post-Trade API that provides clearing members with a consistent,reliable interface into the new clearing service - enabling end-to-end trade lifecycle interactions while insulating participants from the complexity of underlying platforms.

What Aker delivered:

·        Domain-driven modelling at pace using collaborative event-storming to align business and technology on the trade lifecycle, events, and controls

·        Modern event-driven integration to process, validate, enrich, and route FIX/FIXML messages in real time across participants, exchange interfaces, and clearing services

·        Seamless bridging between the new clearing capability and the incumbent clearing platform, enabling service launch without large-scale legacy replacement

·        Event-driven trade lifecycle management to deliver timely, accurate trade status and lifecycle updates to members

·        Extensible onboarding design so new participants and new services can be introduced with minimal incremental integration effort

This approach gives Cboe Clear Europe a post-trade capability that can evolve inline with regulatory change, product growth, and market expectations - without compromising resilience or control.

The Technology

The solution is underpinned by Aker’s cloud and data modernisation accelerators and implemented as a modern, distributed, event-driven architecture designed for low latency and high availability in a regulated operating environment.

Key architectural elements:

·        Distributed architecture optimised for high availability and low-latency message processing

·        Stateful event streaming (Kafka Streams) to manage trade lifecycle state and event progression in real time

·        Domain-Driven Design (DDD) implemented through commands, events, and aggregates to maintain clear domain boundaries and durable business logic

·        On-premises Kubernetes deployment to provide operational control, scalability, and resilience consistent with the client’s regulated environment constraints

·        MQ-based integration to connect reliably with incumbent clearing platforms and exchange interfaces

·        FIX /FIXML connectivity to deliver standards-compliant participant messaging

·        Observability and monitoring built-in to support operational oversight, incident response, service assurance, and regulatory scrutiny

The Value

The programme enabled Cboe Clear Europe to launch its new European equity derivatives clearing service with a secure, real-time, standards-compliant Post-Trade API foundation.

Business outcomes included:

·        Reduced integration complexity for clearing members and market participants via a consistent API and event model

·        Faster onboarding of new participants and services, without adding brittle point-to-point integrations

·        Improved resilience and transparency across post-trade workflows through event-driven lifecycle management and strong observability

·        A scalable platform foundation to support future regulatory requirements, market growth, and product expansion

By modernising post-trade integration in this way, Cboe Clear Europe strengthened its ability to scale confidently - while maintaining the security, reliability, and performance expected of critical financial market infrastructure.