Trade surveillance - definition and best practices

In this blog post, we'll explain trade surveillance and share best practices to keep your company compliant and secure.
Per Friberg

Per Friberg

Senior Financial Crime Surveillance Officer Published 2025-02-03
Street scene with buildings and a woman holding a phone, looking in the distance.

Monitoring trading activities is essential for companies to follow regulations and spot illegitimate behaviour, such as market manipulation or insider trading. This is where trade surveillance comes in.

In this blog post, we'll break down the concept of trade surveillance, share best practices, and explain how combining technology with human expertise can help keep your company compliant and secure. 

What is trade surveillance?

Trade surveillance refers to systems and processes companies implement to monitor trading activities and ensure compliance with laws and regulations. 

It helps identify irregularities, such as market manipulation, insider trading, and other unethical or unlawful market behaviour.

Is market surveillance the same as trade surveillance?

Market and trade surveillance are not the same but are related through similar technology and monitoring methods.

On the one hand, market surveillance encompasses a broad scope where companies monitor market-wide trends and market participants, price movements, and news-driven events to detect anomalies and illegal behaviour. 

On the other hand, trade surveillance focuses specifically on monitoring orders, trades, and account-level behaviour to ensure compliance with market abuse regulations. 

4 best practices for trade surveillance and compliance

To ensure robust trade surveillance and compliance at your company, some of the best practices include:  

1. Invest in modern technology and human knowledge 

The high volume and complexity of trading data make detecting and reporting challenging for surveillance teams.

Moreover, regulations require monitoring all orders and transactions, and sophisticated tools are needed to analyse large amounts of data across different asset classes, markets, and instruments.

This means that to manage the amount of data and comply with regulations, you need to implement advanced technology.  

Solutions such as Trapets Market and Trade Surveillance are key to achieving regulatory compliance and helping your surveillance team manage the high volume of trading data.  

Our solution offers:  

  • A wide range of configurable trigger types; 
  • Real-time and/or batch surveillance, depending on your company's needs; 
  • Daily analysis process to handle large volumes of transactions  
  • Compliance with regulations like: 
  • Market Abuse Regulation (MAR),  
  • Markets in Financial Instruments Directive(MiFID II),  
  • Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MIFIR),  
  • and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) Technical Standards. 

You can combine technological requirements with human expertise through our Managed Services. 

This service allows you to manage monitoring and surveillance with the support of an in-house team of experts at Trapets. We can work alongside your team or handle everything fully outsourced and managed by us. 

2. Develop clear policies and procedures 

Create transparent and well-documented policies that outline protocols for how teams detect and report market abuse and other violations. 

Moreover, it's important to establish a culture where improvement is a priority. Regularly assess and update surveillance requirements and system functionalities to keep pace with the market dynamics.

3. Prioritise staff training and education  

Technology alone won't solve financial crime; it requires human expertise to be truly effective.

This is why you must equip employees with the knowledge they need regarding regular updates on evolving market regulations and training them on the latest systems and features.

Additionally, your team should stay updated and follow legal developments and judicial outcomes related to market abuse cases to align surveillance strategies and better inform compliance efforts. 

4. Foster collaboration with regulatory bodies 

Maintain open communication with the relevant regulatory bodies to stay updated on compliance expectations and priorities within market supervision. Such organisations include the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Serious Fraud Office (SFO)in the UK, and the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (Finansinspektionen) and the Swedish Economic Crime Authority (Ekobrottsmyndigheten) in Sweden.  

You must also establish and maintain a network of compliance teams across the industry to share knowledge, ideas, and insights regularly. 

In conclusion 

Trade surveillance is necessary for identifying illegitimate behaviour in the financial market. To keep up with the large volumes of data and regulatory frameworks, companies must invest not only in technology, but also in human knowledge.  

As Gabriella Bussien, CEO at Trapets, states: "The tech landscape is different from what it looked like a decade ago - there are now countless solutions that can strengthen companies' technical infrastructure against financial crime. However, companies should also invest in experts with the right skills to leverage that technology to its fullest potential. Technology and know-how go hand in hand, but that requires time, resources and commitment."