LSEG and AWS Deepen Collaboration to Boost Cloud Innovation

Across the financial services sector, organisations are increasingly relying on cloud infrastructure to reduce costs, modernise operations and boost resilience against growing cybersecurity and market threats.

In light of this, the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) has widened its multi-year collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS). 

The agreement will grow their already established relationship and see LSEG officially name AWS as its chosen cloud provider across its Risk Intelligence, Markets and FTSE Russell divisions.

Through this strengthened partnership, LSEG strives to enhance operational security and resilience while boosting innovation.

Daniel Maguire, Group Head of Markets, LSEG, explains: “Our ongoing collaboration with AWS is an important part of the Group’s cloud strategy.

“LSEG’s role as a leading global market infrastructure and data provider means that operational resilience is the foundation of everything we do – and cloud services are the cornerstone of our approach. 

“We look forward to working with AWS to deliver innovative products and an enhanced experience for our customers to support their trading and risk management activity.”

LSEG and AWS collaboration history

LSEG began migrating some of its workloads to AWS in 2017.

This partnership aims to enhance efficiency, modernise its infrastructure and improve resiliency and scalability. 

ForexClear, which is part of LSEG’s Post Trade division, needed to migrate critical infrastructure. Instead of hiring external consultants, it partnered with AWS to upskill internal teams using the AWS Experience-Based Acceleration (EBA) programme.

This approach offered agile coaching and facilitation, specialist AWS training and practical experience through a ‘hands-on’ model. It aimed to enhance internal confidence, empower LSEG staff and create a strategic response for larger cloud migrations.

ForexClear organised its first EBA Party in November 2022. The event empowered the team to successfully migrate a business-critical application, highlighting its ability to manage the migration itself.

Not only did this lead to time savings and cost reductions by upskilling internal staff, but ForexClear benefited from improved scalability and resiliency as cloud-based systems offer greater operational flexibility and robustness.

David Gavini, Director of Software Engineering for ForexClear at LSEG, explains: "We have to be extremely resilient in everything we do because if we stop processing trades, the financial markets stop.

“With 4 weeks of planning for the 3-day EBA Party, we quickly achieved exactly what we wanted. We understood what we could migrate to the cloud, how much effort it would take, and what challenges we would face.

“If we had migrated the first application without using AWS EBA, we would have had to stop and start. Given the capacity and concept switching, it would have taken 3–4 months.”

What does the new agreement involve?

The expanded agreement will see AWS formally named as the preferred cloud provider for three vital divisions of LSEG: Risk Intelligence, Markets and FTSE Russell. 

Key elements of the new agreement include:

Migration of internal systems

• LSEG will move more of its internal systems and operations to the AWS cloud. This will help to enhance cybersecurity protections, strengthen operational resilience and streamline service delivery.

Use of Amazon Bedrock

• LSEG’s Risk Intelligence division will embrace Amazon Bedrock, a platform for crafting and scaling Gen AI applications. This will unlock faster, more accurate risk analysis, helping customers respond faster to operational threats and market volatility.

Access to FTSE Russell Indices

• LSEG customers will continue to access quantitative and historical FTSE Russell index data through AWS. This will lead to a deeper analysis of market trends and patterns while speeding up insights and cutting operational costs.

Deployment of AWS Outposts

• LSEG Markets will use AWS Outposts to offer low-latency, resilient services, maintaining high performance and availability for trading and risk management applications.

The extended application will allow LSEG to better meet the changing needs of its financial services customers across the world.

Tanuja Randery, Managing Director, AWS EMEA, explains: “AWS has deep expertise in meeting the unique needs of financial markets participants around the world, and we are excited about the opportunity to scale our work with LSEG.

"We look forward to helping LSEG drive innovation for their financial services customers and improve resilience.” 

Strategic implications for fintech and financial markets

LSEG’s extended partnership with AWS will support the trend of large financial infrastructure providers migrating core systems to the cloud. It showcases to asset managers, banks and fintechs that cloud platforms are essential for agility and resilience and viable. 

By focusing on operational resilience through AWS, LSEG shows how financial institutions are concentrating on infrastructure that can handle regulatory pressures, cyber threats and market volatility. This has the potential to drive a wider shift towards cloud-native solutions with built-in failover capabilities.

The partnership points to the future of the delivery of financial services, where combining operational expertise with technological scale will unlock greater opportunities.

Access to scalable cloud services like AWS Outposts means LSEG and its customers can iterate and deploy new products more quickly. This could result in shorter product development cycles across the industry, especially in ESG analytics, algorithmic trading and digital asset infrastructure.

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