NAICS 523Subsector · 3-digitnational market3 market records

Securities, commodity contracts, and other financial investment and related activities

SoftwareCapital Markets & Post-Trade Systems 5231 · Financial Data & Credit Analytics 5239

This subsector comprises establishments primarily engaged in putting capital at risk in the process of underwriting securities issues or in making markets for securities and commodities; acting as intermediaries between buyers and sellers of securities; providing securities and commodity exchange services (furnishing space, marketplaces, and often facilities for the purpose of facilitating the buying and selling of stocks, stock options, bonds or commodity contracts); facilitating the marketing of financial contracts; asset management (managing portfolios of securities); and providing investment advice, trust, fiduciary, custody and other investment services. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 15,067
Under 10 employeesA: 81%
Establishments · USA: 112,776
Employment · USA: 993,866
Payroll · USA: $268.1B

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–410,55670%

5–91,65411%

10–191,2328%

20–491,1478%

50–992652%

100–1991341%

200–499530%

500+260%

Of 15,067 Canadian establishments with employees, 81% have fewer than ten — an industry of very small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario6,52543%

British Columbia2,80519%

Quebec2,32115%

Alberta1,86312%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Finance and Insurance, US · opened 2020

85.2%

1 year

65.1%

3 years

53.8%

5 years

38.4%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 523, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

national competitionmedium capitalUNVERIFIED

Registration is the barrier and the book of clients is the asset. Advisory practices are acquired and rolled up rather than started cold.

Who sets the price: Fee compression from passive products.
The software it runs on: Portfolio management, trading, post-trade and client reporting.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 5232

Securities Exchange OperationOne thing must be true

binding constraint: incumbent vulnerability

An exchange looks like the purest toll road in finance, and TMX Group's 2025 shows why people want one: revenue of $1,717.2M, up 18%, with income from operations of $771.0M [A] — a 45% operating margin on a business that holds no inventory and takes no market risk. Recognition by a securities commission is a real hurdle, but it has been cleared in Canada more than once, so it is not the cut. The cut is that the incumbent is not vulnerable where the money is. Of TMX's revenue, equities and fixed-income trading and clearing — the only part a new marketplace actually contests — was $283.4M, about 17% [A]. The rest is capital formation ($297.4M), derivatives trading and clearing ($434.5M) and data, indices and analytics ($701.8M) [A]: lines that belong to whoever already has the issuers, the clearing house and the tape. A challenger venue can win matching share by cutting fees to near zero, and in doing so earns near zero, while order flow returns to the deepest book whenever spreads matter. Liquidity is the product, and only incumbency manufactures it. The 65 Canadian establishments are mostly one-to-four-person entities — holding shells, commodity and niche venues, representative offices — around a single 500-plus employer. The software sold to this industry is screened separately at 5231 and 5239.

NAICS 52324 vendors named11 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 5231

Capital Markets & Post-Trade SystemsStructure decides

binding constraint: entry cost

Incumbent SS&C Technologies (NASDAQ: SSNC) and FIS (NYSE: FIS)

Three disclosed lines — SS&C at $6.27B, FIS Capital Markets at $3.20B and Broadridge's technology-and-operations recurring book at $1.92B — put a floor above $11B on this market, and every dollar of it sits behind clearing-house certification, SOC and regulatory audit. Entry is a multi-year certification programme before revenue, which is the wrong shape for a small team.

NAICS 52314 vendors named6 sourced figuresOpen →

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 5239

Financial Data & Credit AnalyticsOne thing must be true

binding constraint: defensibility

Incumbent S&P Global and Moody's

The moat here is legal as well as commercial: credit ratings used for regulatory capital purposes must come from a designated agency (NRSRO in the US, equivalent recognition elsewhere), and that designation is not obtainable by a startup. The adjacent data and analytics businesses are defended by decades of accumulated proprietary history that cannot be back-filled. This is the clearest example in this research of a market where the barrier is a licence somebody else already holds. Sourced update: S&P Global's Market Intelligence segment alone is a $4.92B business and Moody's Analytics is now 97% recurring — an entrant is not selling data into a gap but into two subscription estates that already own the workflow.

NAICS 52393 vendors named5 sourced figuresOpen →

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Companies in this industry · 14

Every company this research names that is filed here or beneath — the operators, and the vendors that sell to them — largest disclosed revenue first. The rank is within the company’s own six-digit industry.

Company	Filed under	Revenue	Rank
SS&CNASDAQ:SSNC	Securities and commodity contracts intermediation and brokerage5231	$6.3B	1/6
TMX GroupTSX:X	Securities and commodity exchanges5232	$1.7B	1/4
BloombergPrivate	Securities and commodity contracts intermediation and brokerage5231	—	2/6
LSEGPrivate	Securities and commodity contracts intermediation and brokerage5231	—	3/6
RidgelinePrivate	Securities and commodity contracts intermediation and brokerage5231	—	4/6
BroadridgeNYSE:BR	Securities and commodity contracts intermediation and brokerage5231	—	5/6
Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE)Private	Securities and commodity exchanges5232	—	2/4
Cboe ExchangeNASDAQ:CBOE	Securities and commodity exchanges5232	—	3/4
FactSetNYSE:FDS	Other financial investment activities5239	—	1/4
Moody'sPrivate	Other financial investment activities5239	—	2/4
MorningstarNASDAQ:MORN	Other financial investment activities5239	—	3/4
Nasdaq CanadaPrivate	Securities and commodity exchanges5232	—	4/4
S&P GlobalNYSE:SPGI	Other financial investment activities5239	—	4/4
Setpoint.ioPrivate	Securities and commodity contracts intermediation and brokerage5231	—	6/6

Who works here

The occupations employed in Finance and insurance, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Tagged to this industry

Auditors, accountants and investment professionals Insurance, real estate and financial sales occupations

Concentrated in this sectorA

Insurance, real estate and financial sales occupations Mostly one sector 51.9%

Auditors, accountants and investment professionals Mostly one sector 43.1%

Computer, software and Web designers and developers Mostly one sector 7.6%

Managers in engineering, architecture, science and information systems Mostly one sector 6.4%

Judges, lawyers and Quebec notaries One industry 3.2%

Library, correspondence and other clerks Mostly one sector 3.1%

Service supervisors Mostly one sector 2.8%

Electrical, electronics and computer engineers Mostly one sector 2.8%

College and other vocational instructors One industry 2%

Cashiers and other sales support occupations One industry 1.8%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Accounting, insurance and related business administrative occupations Across the economy 25.8%

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 23.9%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 13.8%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 9.1%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 8.9%

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 8%

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 7.2%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 6.6%

Office administrative assistants - general, legal and medical Across the economy 5.5%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 4.5%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. But note the shape of this industry: 81% of establishments have fewer than ten employees, and at that size most of these roles are one person wearing several hats, or bought in from outside.

All 162 occupations →

Inside this industry

3 rows sit directly beneath 523, and 21 in all once every level is counted. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
5231	Securities and commodity contracts intermediation and brokerage	2,642	Capital Markets & Post-Trade Systems
5232	Securities and commodity exchanges	65	Securities Exchange Operation
5239	Other financial investment activities	12,360	Financial Data & Credit Analytics

Alongside it, under 52 Finance and insurance

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
521	Monetary authorities - central bank	5	Central Bank — a Buyer, Not a Market
522	Credit intermediation and related activities	14,036	Core Banking Systems Mortgage Origination & Servicing Systems RegTech & Financial Crime Compliance+1 more
524	Insurance carriers and related activities	11,752	Insurance Carrier Core Systems Insurance Agency Management Systems Insurance Brokerage Book Acquisition
526	Funds and other financial vehicles	751	Fund Administration & Private Capital Software Pension Fund (a Buyer, Not a Market)Investment Fund Launch