Insight
Aug 2025
Vaibhav Garg
The Future of Securities Finance:
How EquiLend’s AI Assistant Can Redefine Data, Insights & Client Value
Securities finance professionals are swimming in oceans of data: short interest signals, lending fees, macro signals, modelling data and often searching across data silos. The real problem is having enough time to turn that data into quantifiable output when it matters most.
Every day traders, risk managers, portfolio managers and other finance professionals chase insights that are stuck in spreadsheets or scattered across dashboards. By the time they access what they need, the market has already moved on.
So, if markets react in seconds, why are so many firms still hunting for answers in outdated data?
June Markets Analyzed
Global markets demonstrated strength in June as easing trade tensions, resilient labor markets, and moderating inflation overcame geopolitical uncertainty and slowing economic growth to reach all time highs for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. Securities lending markets saw continued demand even as volatility remained subdued. EquiLend’s NGT saw 3,181,790 trades executed v. $3.59T; flat month-over-month but up 26% from June 2024.
Why GenAI, Why Now?
Generative AI promises quick and easy aggregated insight, turning a tangle of reports, dashboards and feeds into a place of clear insight, query by query. As AI has increased in popularity, it’s clear why this shift happening now but why does it matter for securities finance?
The sheer volume of financial data has exploded in the last 10 years, delivering valuable insights but equally much of the data is unstructured. Exponential volume of trading data, real-time news cycles, filings, transcripts, live market chatter, market insight newsletters and more – no human can keep up with this volume of data alone. Generative AI tools deliver the ability to query this unstructured content and return structured, quantifiable data-led responses to the most specific of queries.
The real breakthrough with AI tools like EquiLend’s AI Assistant is that it understands natural language. Users don’t need to be able to write SQL code or have access to just the right dashboard. With the EquiLend AI Assistant, permissioned users can query the full historic database with relevant questions, e.g. “ and get the answer.
Why Domain Expertise Matters for AI Output
Not all AI tools are created equal – generic chatbots might guess at financial answers. EquiLend AI Assistant can demonstrate clear domain expertise. The EquiLend Data & Analytics dataset is unparalleled in securities finance, tracking rich metrics across a universe of data, spanning $43 trillion of global lendable assets and 196,000+ securities.
The EquiLend AI Assistant is accessible via the DataLend UI or Orbisa for Bloomberg and is designed to empower users to query years of research-driven insights directly within the platform. It provides clear, contextual responses drawn from EquiLend’s deep well of published market research and insights including The Purple, Orbisa daily reports, Take Notes and Market Flash analysis. It understands the context users work in daily, delivering credible, transparent and traceable responses, supplying responses that are specific, credible and reference ready, to best support teams that need trusted insight at their fingertips.
How AI Changes the Game
The initial challenge for users in this data ocean remains finding answers quickly enough to take early action. Even with the speed of modern technology, disparate, siloed, legacy systems and slow uptake of new tech across firms can work against progress. Without support, progressing from data overwhelm to data transparency and trusted, actionable insight output takes time, slowing decisions down.
With the AI Assistant, users can ask questions like — “What is a short squeeze and what are some historic examples?” or “What ETFs are seeing the biggest change in Short Interest?”. AI Assistant instantly scans our research data for the relevant information and responds with a detailed summary. This shift empowers desks to move faster than the market noise.
Real Benefits: Better Decisions, Smarter Risks
Beyond speed, EquiLend’s AI Assistant is in making published insights more usable and ready to support daily decisions across departments. For risk teams, that means clearer oversight of lending exposures and early awareness of trends that can help teams ask the right questions before challenges grow.
On the front line, traders and lending desks can tap EquiLend AI Assistant to surface context from past market movements, learn from similar historical scenarios and see how lending dynamics have played out over time without digging through pages of reports.
Client teams can deliver answers on the spot, drawing from EquiLend’s vetted commentary. If a beneficial owner wants to understand what drove a revenue spike last quarter, teams can get a clear breakdown in seconds; key securities, fee drivers and relevant market context all sourced from published insights they can trust.
When routine queries are handled this way, users can stay focused on strategy, querying data to inform or build on their own 360-research and market intelligence. EquiLend AI Assistant is the first step in framing better questions to enable human users to decide how to apply information and act on it.
With the AI Assistant, users can ask questions like — “What is a short squeeze and what are some historic examples?” or “What ETFs are seeing the biggest change in Short Interest?”. AI Assistant instantly scans our research data for the relevant information and responds with a detailed summary. This shift empowers desks to move faster than the market noise.
The Road Ahead: A Glimpse into the Future of GenAI in Securities Finance
Right now, Generative AI tools help users ask better questions and get clearer answers, fast. Watching lending data, fee shifts, news and short interest moves in the background, flagging patterns and outliers early so desks can react before the market does. Stay tuned for future enhancements!
EquiLend’s aim is simple: make future technology real for securities finance. If you want to find out more and see the functionality in action, our team is ready to show you what’s next. Get in touch and let’s talk about the EquiLend AI Assistant that works where, when and how you do.
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