VICTORIA GEDDES, Executive Director.

Aside from tracking who is buying and selling their shares, the next piece of information monitored by companies and IR professionals, is which brokers are most active in trading their stock

Broker trade data, as reported in market disclosures and public data feeds, is the go-to source for this information but it often only tells part of the story.

The list of brokers that appear in trading data can be diverse, from global investment banks and boutique advisory firms to proprietary trading desks and specialist execution-only brokers. Firms like Susquehanna Pacific primarily function as proprietary traders engaged in high-frequency market-making. In contrast, Virtu ITG and BTIG serve institutional clients, offering sophisticated multi-asset execution, liquidity sourcing, and agency trading solutions. A growing number of brokers, however, serve purely as intermediaries, executing trades on behalf of white-label platforms, fintechs, or independent advisers whose names do not appear in the public trade logs.

Over the past decade, the rise of these execution-only and third-party settlement providers has reshaped the broking ecosystem. Firms such as FinClear, FNZ Securities, WealthHub Securities and Third Party Platform execute trades on behalf of multiple platforms, dealer groups and brokers. This model enables the end-platform or adviser to avoid the regulatory and operational overhead of holding market participant licenses or managing back-office functions. It also allows fintechs and advisory groups to focus on client experience and portfolio construction, while outsourcing execution, clearing and settlement to specialised service providers.

For IR professionals, this has important implications. The broker listed against a trade may not be the same intermediary that originated it. A trade executed by FNZ Securities, for instance, could reflect retail flow from clients of SelfWealth, or advisers on platforms like Nest Egg or Superhero. A brief overview of some common execution relationships is shown in the table below:

FinClear is a good example of a provider of wholesale only services which executes trades for a wide range of clientele. Established in 2015, Finclear serviced a range of financial planners, wealth managers, boutique stockbrokers, fintechs and large institutional clients such as Commonwealth Bank and Macquarie Bank. Its acquisition of Pershing Securities Australia in 2021 enabled it to expand its service offering to larger stockbrokers and it is now the leading provider of execution and clearing services in Australia. Finclear will therefore often appear as one of the larger traders of a company’s stock.

At FIRST Advisers, we use proprietary tools and in-depth analysis to map these relationships, helping companies understand which brokers and platforms are truly driving retail shareholder activity, and how best to engage with them.