Every operator class, one market infrastructure
Brokers, dealers, market makers, custodians, registrars, trustees and advisers each hold a distinct licence and a distinct mandate. ContiSX provisions the exact infrastructure each class needs — and nothing it is not permitted to touch.
What is a Capital Market Operator?
A Capital Market Operator is a licensed institution authorised to perform one specific function in the securities market. The licence is not a general permission to participate — it is a narrow, supervised mandate. A registrar may not take positions. A broker may not hold the register. A trustee answers to beneficiaries, not to the issuer that pays it.
That separation is what makes a market trustworthy. ContiSX encodes it: your class determines which modules provision, which order books you reach, which account structures you can instruct, and which reports you are held to.
Trading & liquidity
Brokers, dealers, broker-dealers and market makers move orders, take risk and keep prices continuous.
Post-trade & records
Custodians and registrars hold the assets and keep the ownership record straight after the trade.
Fiduciary & advisory
Trustees and accredited advisers act in someone else's interest under a documented duty.
Eight licences, eight mandates
Filter by function, then open any class for its full mandate, platform capabilities and the modules it provisions.
Broker
Most commonExecute client orders on ContiSX, manage retail portfolios, and offer white-label trading platforms.
Dealer
Trade on a principal basis, provide liquidity, and manage proprietary book positions.
Broker Dealer
Full accessDual-capacity licence enabling both agency and principal trading across ContiSX markets.
Market Maker
Provide continuous two-way quotes, ensure liquidity, and earn spreads on ContiSX securities.
Custodian
Safeguard securities assets on behalf of institutional clients and pension funds.
Registrar
Maintain shareholder registers, process transfers, and manage corporate actions.
Trustees
Hold and safeguard assets in trust for the benefit of investors and beneficiaries.
Accredited Adviser
SEC-registered investment advisers providing portfolio guidance to ContiSX clients.
What each operator actually does
The regulatory mandate on the left, the ContiSX capability that discharges it on the right.
Broker
SEC broker / dealing-member licence
A broker acts purely as an agent. You never take the other side of your client's trade — you receive the order, route it to the ContiSX matching engine, evidence best execution, and earn a commission. It is the fastest operator class to onboard because it carries no principal risk and the lightest capital floor.
Regulatory mandate
- Receive, validate and transmit client orders to ContiSX venues
- Achieve and evidence best execution on every fill
- Onboard, KYC and risk-profile clients under your own brand
- Act on client mandate only — no proprietary positions
- Issue contract notes, statements and regulatory trade reports
On ContiSX
- White-label trading front-end on your own domain, no code required
- Full order management: market, limit, stop and algorithmic types
- Client CRM with tiered onboarding, KYC/AML and suitability checks
- Commission engine with per-client and per-instrument fee schedules
- Straight-through settlement into the ContiSX CSD
- Real-time P&L, statements and regulator-ready reporting packs
Some modules provisioned
Dealer
SEC dealer licence + capital adequacy
A dealer trades on a principal basis — buying and selling from its own book and earning the spread rather than a commission. You quote prices to clients and counterparties, warehouse risk, and manage inventory across ContiSX markets under continuous capital-adequacy supervision.
Regulatory mandate
- Trade for own account and carry genuine inventory risk
- Quote bid and offer prices to clients and counterparties
- Manage proprietary exposure, limits and hedges intraday
- Meet net-liquid-capital requirements continuously, not periodically
- Segregate proprietary flow from any client-facing activity
On ContiSX
- Dedicated principal book with live position and exposure views
- Risk engine: position limits, concentration caps and kill switches
- RFQ desk for negotiated, block and off-book trades
- Inventory analytics across equities, fixed income and digital assets
- Margin and collateral management wired to the Securities Vault
- Intraday mark-to-market with end-of-day valuation runs
Some modules provisioned
Broker Dealer
SEC broker-dealer licence — highest capital tier
The dual-capacity licence. A broker-dealer may act as agent for its clients and as principal for its own account — the widest permission set on ContiSX. In return it carries the strictest conflict-of-interest, disclosure and capital obligations of the trading classes.
Regulatory mandate
- Operate agency and principal desks under a single licence
- Disclose dealing capacity on every trade confirmation
- Enforce information barriers between client flow and the prop book
- Apply order priority that puts client orders ahead of own account
- Maintain the highest capital adequacy of the trading classes
On ContiSX
- Agency and principal books side by side in one console
- Automatic capacity tagging and disclosure on contract notes
- Configurable information barriers and desk-level entitlements
- Client-priority enforcement built into the matching path
- Consolidated regulatory reporting across both capacities
- Full white-label venue plus governed internalisation controls
Some modules provisioned
Market Maker
Dealer licence + venue market-making agreement
A market maker commits to continuous two-way quotes in assigned instruments. You are the reason a security stays tradable — posting a firm bid and offer, within a maximum spread and for a minimum size, across a defined share of the trading session.
Regulatory mandate
- Post continuous, firm two-way quotes in assigned instruments
- Honour maximum-spread and minimum-size obligations
- Meet the quoting-presence threshold across each session
- Manage inventory and hedge residual exposure
- Support price discovery through auctions and volatile periods
On ContiSX
- Quoting engine with per-instrument spread and size parameters
- Obligation monitor scoring live presence, spread and size compliance
- Automated quote withdrawal and re-entry under volatility bands
- Rebate and incentive accrual visible in real time
- Low-latency REST and WebSocket access for automated strategies
- Auction tooling for opening, closing and IPO crosses
Some modules provisioned
Custodian
SEC custodian registration
A custodian safeguards securities and cash belonging to someone else — pension funds, asset managers, institutions and their underlying clients. You never own the assets; you hold, service and account for them. Segregation of client property from your own is absolute.
Regulatory mandate
- Hold client securities and cash in fully segregated accounts
- Reconcile holdings daily against the depository record
- Process corporate actions, dividends, coupons and proxy instructions
- Deliver independent valuations and holding statements
- Support trustee and auditor oversight of client assets
On ContiSX
- Segregated omnibus and designated account structures in the CSD
- Automated daily reconciliation with break management and ageing
- Corporate-action capture, election windows and entitlement payout
- Institutional reporting: holdings, transactions, valuation, tax packs
- Delivery-versus-payment settlement wired to ContiSX Pay
- Immutable audit trail on every asset movement
Some modules provisioned
Registrar
SEC registrar registration
A registrar is the official keeper of an issuer's register of members. You are the source of truth for who owns what, you process every transfer and transmission, and you execute corporate actions on the issuer's behalf.
Regulatory mandate
- Maintain the definitive register of members for each issuer
- Process transfers, transmissions and re-registrations
- Administer dividends, bonuses, rights issues and splits
- Manage AGM notices, proxies and poll results
- Handle dematerialisation and unclaimed-dividend reconciliation
On ContiSX
- Live register synchronised with ContiSX CSD positions
- Bulk transfer and transmission processing with maker-checker approval
- Corporate-action workbench from declaration through to payment
- Shareholder portal for statements, mandates and e-dividend enrolment
- AGM, proxy and voting tooling integrated with ContiSX Boardroom
- Issuer analytics: register concentration, churn and holder profile
Some modules provisioned
Trustees
SEC trustee registration
A trustee holds assets in trust and acts solely in the interest of the beneficiaries. In debt issues and collective schemes you are the investors' protector — monitoring covenants, holding the security, and stepping in when an issuer defaults.
Regulatory mandate
- Hold trust property and security on behalf of beneficiaries
- Monitor issuer covenants, sinking funds and coupon obligations
- Convene and represent noteholders or unitholders
- Enforce security and act decisively on default events
- Report independently to beneficiaries and the regulator
On ContiSX
- Trust-account structures with beneficiary-level entitlement records
- Covenant monitoring with automated breach alerts
- Coupon, redemption and sinking-fund payment scheduling
- Noteholder registers, meeting convening and voting
- Collateral and securities tracking
- Default workflow with enforcement and distribution waterfall
Some modules provisioned
Accredited Adviser
SEC investment-adviser registration
An accredited adviser gives investment advice and manages portfolios under mandate. You earn advisory or management fees rather than spreads — and you owe every client a documented suitability and fiduciary standard on each recommendation.
Regulatory mandate
- Give investment advice under a documented client mandate
- Assess suitability, risk tolerance and objectives before advising
- Disclose fees, conflicts and inducements in full
- Manage discretionary and advisory portfolios within mandate limits
- Report performance and holdings on a defined cycle
On ContiSX
- Model portfolios with bulk rebalancing across client accounts
- Suitability and risk-profiling workflow attached to every mandate
- Discretionary and advisory account types with mandate guardrails
- Fee billing on AUM, performance or flat-fee schedules
- Client reporting portal with performance attribution
- Research and decision support through ContiSX Sage and Decision Lab
Some modules provisioned
Permission matrix
What each class may do. Permissions are enforced at provisioning — not left to policy.
| Operator | Agency execution | Principal risk | Quote obligation | Client asset custody | Register keeping | Fiduciary trust | Advisory mandate | Own trading venue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Broker | ||||||||
| Dealer | ||||||||
| Broker Dealer | ||||||||
| Market Maker | ||||||||
| Custodian | ||||||||
| Registrar | ||||||||
| Trustees | ||||||||
| Accredited Adviser |
The infrastructure behind every class
One depository, one settlement path, one surveillance layer. Your licence decides how much of it you reach.
ContiSX CSD
Central depository for dematerialised holdings, DvP settlement and the single position record every operator reconciles against.
Securities Vault
Segregated asset, collateral and margin custody with immutable movement history and perfection tracking.
ContiSX Pay
Cash leg for settlement, dividend and coupon payouts, client funding and fee collection in NGN and USD.
Trading & Matching
Multi-asset matching engine, order management, RFQ and auction infrastructure shared by every trading class.
Shield
Risk, surveillance and protection layer — limits, kill switches, anomaly detection and incident response.
Sage & Decision Lab
Research, analytics and decision support for advisory mandates, pricing models and portfolio construction.
Boardroom
Governance, approvals, meetings and voting — used by registrars, trustees and every operator's control functions.
APIs & SDKs
REST and WebSocket access, sandbox keys and certification so operators can automate every workflow above.
From licence to live operator
The same four stages for every class — only the certification suite differs.
Submit your licence
Upload your active SEC registration for the operator class you hold. Compliance validates the licence, directors and beneficial ownership.
Provision & configure
Your operator workspace is provisioned with the modules your class permits. Configure brand, domain, fee schedules, limits and desk entitlements.
Integrate & certify
Connect your systems through sandbox APIs, run the certification suite for your class, and rehearse settlement, reporting and corporate-action flows.
Go live & supervise
Move to production with live surveillance, obligation monitoring and regulator-ready reporting running from day one.
A licence is a duty, continuously
Every operator class carries obligations that do not pause between trading sessions. ContiSX runs them as live controls in the transaction path rather than as a month-end reconciliation exercise.
Capital adequacy
Net liquid capital is computed continuously from live positions, not at month end. Breaches raise alerts before they become findings.
Asset segregation
Client property sits in segregated structures that a proprietary instruction cannot reach. Reconciliation breaks are aged and escalated.
Reporting & records
Trade, position, holding and corporate-action reports are generated in regulator format with a complete, immutable audit trail.
Conduct & surveillance
Best execution, order priority, conflict disclosure and market-abuse surveillance are enforced in the transaction path itself.
Before you apply
A Capital Market Operator (CMO) is a licensed institution authorised to perform a defined function in the securities market — executing trades, providing liquidity, holding assets, keeping registers, acting as trustee or advising investors. Every CMO class carries its own permissions, capital requirement and conduct obligations. ContiSX gives each class the infrastructure to discharge its mandate.
Active SEC registration requiredBring your licence. We'll bring the market.
Whichever class you hold, onboarding starts the same way: submit your registration and we provision the exact infrastructure your mandate requires.