Built for IB, trading, research, and buy-side relationship teams
Capital markets CRM is 4 businesses, 1 compliance surface, and 23 regulators watching.
A capital-markets firm runs investment banking, sales and trading, sell-side research, and buy-side relationship on the same holding co with information barriers between them. The compliance floor spans FINRA, SEC, OCC, CFTC, FCA, ESMA, and whichever market regulator the firm trades in. Horizontal CRMs do not model this. Strkr ships the capital-markets structure with the compliance plumbing to match.
Vikram runs IR and research distribution at a boutique investment bank with 32 bankers, 11 research analysts, and 7 sales traders. Juno covers MD-level relationships at a mid-market PE fund that touches public-markets exits and principal investing with information-barrier obligations. Both of them have the same evaluation story: the CRM has to carry the business and the compliance surface at the same time without leaking MNPI, and most horizontal CRMs cannot do either part cleanly. The six items below are the recurring frictions on capital-markets CRM evaluations.
The four-business problem
IB, trading, research, and buy-side on one holding co.
A capital-markets firm runs investment banking (M&A, ECM, DCM), sales and trading (sell-side execution), sell-side research (equity research, credit research, FX research), and buy-side relationship (coverage of asset managers, hedge funds, family offices). Each business has a different relationship shape and a different regulatory profile. Horizontal CRMs model one of them (sales) and workaround the other three. Strkr's capital-markets configuration ships all four with the right structure per business line.
MNPI and information barriers
The Chinese wall between IB and research is a system.
Material non-public information (MNPI) sits with the IB team on live deals. The research team cannot see IB-side information. The trading team cannot see IB-side information. The information barrier is a compliance obligation enforced by Chinese Wall policies, pre-publication communication reviews, personal-account trading restrictions, and the FINRA Rule 2241 attestation. Strkr runs information barriers as a first-class system with the audit log capturing cross-wall access attempts for the CCO weekly review.
FINRA Rule 2241 attestation
Research analyst independence attestation on every report.
FINRA Rule 2241 governs research analyst independence with specific obligations: separation from IB influence, personal-account trading restrictions, pre-publication communication logging, published-report disclosure requirements. Each published research report requires an attestation that the analyst meets the Rule 2241 standards. Strkr tracks the attestation per report with the evidence (personal-trading-record check, pre-publication-communication log, IB-coverage conflicts flag) attached.
Sell-side research distribution
The institutional distribution list and the readership tracking.
Sell-side research distributes to buy-side institutional clients with the readership tracking driving the quarterly commission allocation (II survey, Greenwich survey, direct client vote). Who reads what, who downloads what, who requests a follow-up call. Horizontal CRMs do not model this. Strkr's research-distribution surface tracks per-client, per-report readership with the quarterly commission-allocation report pulling from the tracked signal.
IB deal flow
The deal pipeline with the stage ladder.
IB deal flow runs through sourcing, pitch, mandate, diligence, marketing (for ECM and DCM), pricing (for ECM and DCM), execution, closing. The stage ladder differs from a sales pipeline. Mandates often have multiple parties (lead advisor, co-advisor, legal counsel) with the fee split structure. Strkr IB configuration ships the deal-flow pipeline with the sector-specific stage definitions, the fee-split structure, and the IC approval tracking.
Multi-regulator exam readiness
FINRA, SEC, FCA, ESMA each at different cadences.
Capital-markets firms operate in multiple jurisdictions with multiple regulators conducting exams at different cadences. FINRA cycle exams (typically 24 to 48 months), SEC exams (periodic), FCA supervision (ongoing for FCA-regulated firms), ESMA via national competent authorities for EU operations. Each exam pulls different evidence in different formats. Strkr's multi-regulator exam-prep export packages per-regulator in the format each requires.
What a capital-markets CRM should ship
The capital-markets primitives, on a modern CRM.
A capital-markets firm needs specific primitives shipped on every seat with the compliance surface shipped by default. The cards below are the capabilities Strkr's capital-markets configuration ships for IB, trading, research, and buy-side relationship teams.
Information barrier engine
Native Chinese Wall architecture per record and field.
Information barriers configure per record type and per field. A firm with sell-side research alongside IB configures a barrier so research personnel see the research record set, IB personnel see the IB record set, and the controlled crossing points route through a wall-crossing protocol. The audit log captures every cross-wall access attempt (successful or denied) with user, timestamp, record, and justification. The CCO reviews the cross-wall log weekly. The FINRA Rule 2241 attestation and the SEC Reg AC attestation pull evidence from the audit log automatically.
Research distribution and readership
The II survey backing the commission allocation.
Research reports distribute to the institutional client list with the per-client, per-report readership tracking (opened, downloaded, forwarded, follow-up requested). Quarterly commission-allocation reports pull from the readership signal with the client vote from the II survey, the Greenwich survey, or the direct client vote supplementing. Vikram's team cut quarterly commission-allocation reconciliation time from 2 weeks to 2 days on the Strkr readership surface.
IB deal pipeline
The deal flow with the fee-split structure.
IB deal flow runs through the stage ladder: sourcing, pitch, mandate, diligence, marketing (ECM, DCM), pricing (ECM, DCM), execution, closing. Each deal carries the mandate structure (lead, co, sole), the fee split per party, the IC approval status, the KYC-and-conflicts status, and the regulatory approvals needed. Pipeline reporting rolls up by sector, product (M&A sell-side, M&A buy-side, ECM, DCM, Private Capital Advisory), and MD-level ownership.
Buy-side relationship coverage
The MD who covers 44 institutional accounts.
Buy-side relationship coverage runs per MD-level banker covering a book of institutional clients (asset managers, hedge funds, insurance GAs, family offices, endowments, sovereign wealth). Each client carries the AUM, the strategy focus, the key decision-makers, the historical trading-and-research consumption, the commission wallet, and the per-year coverage plan. Juno's book of 44 institutional accounts opens on one surface with the coverage priorities per account.
Sales and trading desk integration
The trade blotter adjacent to the client record.
Sales and trading execution logs to the client record with trade-level detail (ticker, side, size, price, time, commission) subject to the firm's compliance retention. The desk-view surface shows the active positions, the recent trades, and the research-related activity (which research the client just read). The sales trader opens the client record and sees the right conversation context without pulling from the execution-management system separately.
FINRA Rule 2241 and Reg AC attestation
Research-report compliance evidence on every publication.
Each published research report retains with the compliance evidence: the analyst's personal-trading-record check (clearing against the personal-account restrictions), the pre-publication-communication log (preventing IB influence), the IB-coverage conflicts flag (surfacing if the covered company is an IB client), the analyst compensation attestation, and the Rule 2241 disclosures. SEC Reg AC analyst certification generates with the report. The CCO quarterly review pulls the evidence as a report.
SEC Rule 17a-4 retention
The broker-dealer records retention standard.
SEC Rule 17a-4 requires 6-year retention for most broker-dealer records with 3-year immediate accessibility. The 2022 amendments permit an audit-trail alternative to the historical WORM-equivalent storage. Strkr's capital-markets configuration implements the audit-trail alternative with cryptographic hash chains, tamper-evident logging, and third-party time stamping. For firms that prefer WORM-equivalent storage, Strkr integrates with a certified third-party WORM provider.
MiFID II client communication retention
For firms with EU operations, the 5-year post-service retention.
MiFID II requires 5-year retention post-service for client communications relating to financial-instrument transactions, including telephone recordings and electronic communications. Strkr's EU-tier configuration applies the 5-year retention clock on client communications with the record classification driving the retention category. For firms with UK operations post-Brexit, the FCA's MiFIR-adjacent retention runs in parallel.
Flat per-seat pricing
The license line does not surprise.
Flat per-seat pricing with the full product. No per-record meter. No compliance-module SKU. No research-distribution tier. A 50-banker boutique IB pays 50 seats plus research-and-IR distribution usage. A 180-user mid-market firm pays 180. The invoice is predictable 24 months out, which is a operational benefit versus Salesforce Financial Services Cloud plus Shield plus Event Monitoring plus Signature Success stacking on the enterprise end.
The compliance surface in detail
What the CCO at a capital-markets firm actually needs.
Compliance in capital markets is where every CRM evaluation gets tested. The six items below are the compliance capabilities the CCO at a boutique IB, a mid-market firm, or a buy-side relationship manager looks for.
Personal account trading surveillance
The pre-trade and post-trade reviews.
Personal-account trading surveillance under FINRA Rule 3210 and the firm's personal-trading policy runs pre-trade (requested trade routes to the compliance queue for approval or denial) and post-trade (periodic review of personal-account activity against the firm's trading activity). Strkr integrates with the common personal-trading-compliance tools (StarCompliance, Ascent, Compliance.ai) via API so the compliance evidence lives on both sides.
Expert-network interaction logging
The post-SAC-Capital compliance surface.
Post-SAC Capital enforcement, expert-network interactions (where a research analyst or portfolio manager pays for consultation with industry experts) require specific logging and compliance oversight. Strkr tracks per-interaction logging with the expert identity, the compliance approval, the topic area, the firm the expert is affiliated with (to flag coverage conflicts), and the specific MNPI protocols followed.
Market-abuse surveillance
The MAR, Dodd-Frank, and FINRA 5280 obligations.
Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) for EU-licensed firms, Dodd-Frank Title VII swap-dealer obligations for CFTC-registered firms, and FINRA Rule 5280 for research-position-affecting-trading restrictions each impose surveillance obligations. Strkr's audit log captures the interaction records (research publication timing, trading activity in the same security, communication logs around market-moving events) that the surveillance engines consume.
Research-coverage conflicts
The IB-coverage flag on every research report.
Research reports covering a company that is also an IB client require specific conflicts disclosures. Strkr tracks per-company the IB-coverage status (active mandate, dormant mandate, recent-ex-client, no coverage), surfaces the conflict flag on the analyst's research-authoring surface, and generates the disclosures required under Rule 2241 and SEC Reg AC.
Reg FD compliance
The selective-disclosure prevention.
SEC Regulation FD prohibits selective disclosure of material non-public information to analysts or investors. For firms with research analysts covering public issuers, the Reg FD compliance surface tracks per-call participants, pre-briefing-material disclosure, and post-call disclosure obligations where the issuer may have disclosed MNPI. Strkr's call-logging surface captures the participants and the material shared for the Reg FD evidence.
Audit log depth
Who accessed what MNPI, when, with what justification.
Every MNPI-classified record access logs user ID, timestamp, source IP, action, and business justification. Cross-wall access attempts (both successful under wall-crossing protocol and denied without crossing) log with the authorization chain. Access patterns surface anomaly flags that the CCO reviews weekly. For firms that have been subject to a prior enforcement action, the audit log depth is often the single capability driving the CRM switch.
The business-line fit
What each capital-markets line of business runs on.
Capital markets is four businesses. The cards below cover the capability each line uses most on Strkr, which keeps evaluation calls honest about which parts matter for which seat count.
Investment banking
Deal flow, fee splits, mandate structure, IC approval.
IB bankers run deal flow from sourcing through close with the fee-split structure, the mandate structure (lead, co, sole, joint), the IC approval tracking, and the KYC-and-conflicts clearance. Pipeline reporting rolls up by sector, product, and MD. Vikram's 32-banker IB floor runs 180 to 220 active opportunities at any time with the stage distribution driving the quarterly forecast conversation.
Research analysts author reports with the integrated authoring surface, the compliance pre-check (coverage conflicts, personal-trading, pre-publication communications), the publication workflow, the distribution to the institutional client list, and the readership tracking. Rule 2241 attestation generates automatically with the report. Vikram's 11 analysts publish 480 to 620 reports a year through the Strkr authoring-and-distribution surface.
Sales and trading
The desk view with the trade blotter.
Sales traders cover institutional accounts with the trade-execution feed logging to the client record. The desk view shows active positions, recent trades, and the research-reading activity so the sales trader has the right conversation hooks on the Monday morning call-around. Trade-level detail retains for the compliance retention clock. For firms with multiple desks (equity, credit, FX, rates), the per-desk configuration ships with the right fields and the right compliance posture.
Buy-side relationship coverage
The MD book of 44 institutional accounts.
Buy-side relationship MDs run coverage of institutional accounts with the per-account coverage plan, the quarterly review cadence, the commission wallet tracking, the trading-and-research consumption, and the per-account KPIs. Juno's 44-account book opens on one surface with the priorities per account and the commission-allocation signal for the quarterly conversation.
Capital markets origination
ECM and DCM pipelines with syndicate structure.
Equity capital markets (IPOs, follow-ons, convertibles) and debt capital markets (bond issuance, loan syndication) run through a pipeline with the syndicate structure (bookrunner, co-manager, selling-group), the pricing-and-allocation process, and the aftermarket support. Strkr's ECM and DCM configurations ship the pipeline with the syndicate-fee structure and the regulatory approvals (SEC Form S-1 for IPOs, state blue-sky for private placements).
Corporate access
The non-deal roadshow and the issuer-investor meeting.
Corporate access teams organize issuer-investor meetings (non-deal roadshows, management conferences, 1x1 meetings) with the compliance surface tracking per-meeting attendance, materials shared, and the Reg FD disclosure obligations where applicable. The quarterly commission allocation often includes a corporate-access component that the readership-and-meeting-attendance tracking supports.
Head-to-head
Strkr vs DealCloud for a boutique investment bank.
DealCloud (Intapp) is the common comparison for capital-markets CRM at boutique IB and mid-market firms. Salesforce Financial Services Cloud is the enterprise comparison. Backstop Solutions, Dynamo, and specific research-distribution tools (FactSet Marquee, Visible Alpha) cover specific subsegments. The head-to-head below focuses on DealCloud for a 30-to-100-user boutique IB.
Feature
Strkr
DealCloud (Intapp)
Pricing basis
Flat per seat, full product on every paid tier
Per user plus professional services
Information barrier engine
Native per record type and field
Via Intapp Walls (separate product)
IB deal pipeline
Native with fee splits and IC approval
Native deal management core strength
Research distribution and readership
Native readership tracking with II survey backing
Via integrations with research platforms
FINRA Rule 2241 and Reg AC attestation
Native per-report evidence surface
Via configured workflow
SEC Rule 17a-4 retention
6-year with audit-trail alternative or WORM integration
Via Intapp Secure plus archive integration
MiFID II telephone recording retention
5-year retention on EU-tier configuration
Via archive integration
Buy-side relationship coverage
Native with commission wallet tracking
Via custom configuration
Sales and trading desk integration
Native desk view with trade blotter
Via integration with execution-management system
Three-year TCO for 60 users
Transparent per-seat math
License plus implementation plus Intapp Walls
How teams use Strkr
How capital-markets firms run Strkr.
The common thread across capital-markets accounts: the information barriers run natively, the compliance evidence pulls as a report rather than a project, and the four lines of business share a CRM without sharing MNPI. The playbooks below are motions live on capital-markets accounts right now.
Boutique IB, 50-user firm
Information barrier audit cleared with 0 findings.
Vikram's boutique IB with 32 bankers, 11 research analysts, and 7 sales traders ran the first FINRA cycle exam after moving to Strkr. The information-barrier audit tested the Chinese Wall between IB and research with specific access-attempt scenarios and specific cross-wall protocol tests. The audit cleared with 0 findings. The CCO cited the native information-barrier architecture as the capability that made the audit a 4-day exam instead of a 2-week ordeal.
Mid-market full-service firm
Quarterly commission allocation cut from 2 weeks to 2 days.
A 180-user mid-market full-service firm with equity research, sales and trading, IB, and corporate access moved commission-allocation reconciliation from a 2-week spreadsheet exercise to a 2-day Strkr-report-and-review process. The driver: readership signal, trading activity, meeting attendance, and corporate-access participation all live on the client record so the allocation report pulls from one place. The CFO signed off the Q1 allocation on day 2 of the new process against the historical day-11 target.
Buy-side relationship team at a prime broker
MD book transparency drove 14 percent commission-wallet growth.
Juno's MD-level buy-side coverage team at a prime broker runs 23 MDs covering 1,100 institutional accounts. The per-MD book transparency on Strkr (quarterly commission wallet, YoY trending, account priority flags, next-action suggestions from Strkr AI) drove behavior changes in coverage cadence. Commission-wallet growth across the covered book ran 14 percent year over year, roughly 2x the firm average, which the ops VP credited to the signal visibility.
ECM origination desk
Syndicate-structure and allocation ran on one tool.
A mid-market ECM origination desk running 23 IPOs and follow-ons per year moved syndicate-structure, pricing, and allocation tracking from Excel-plus-email to Strkr. The unlock: the per-deal syndicate structure (bookrunner, co-manager, selling-group) with the per-member fee split and allocation role lived in one place. The pricing night ran with the allocation data rather than the spreadsheet-of-spreadsheets pattern. Syndicate-member relations improved as a result of the consistent allocation-decision transparency.
Research-distribution team at an EU-licensed firm
MiFID II unbundling evidence cleared the FCA review.
An EU-licensed research-distribution team ran MiFID II post-unbundling with the research-pricing arrangements per client (hard-dollar research payment, bundled commission arrangement, trial access, free-to-corporate-access). The FCA review tested the pricing-arrangement evidence and the research-consumption evidence per client. Strkr's per-client research-pricing-and-consumption surface produced the evidence in the FCA-prescribed format. The review closed with no finding, with the CCO citing the structured per-client evidence as the capability driving the clean outcome.
A capital-markets CRM that models four businesses on one compliance surface.
Start a 14-day trial with the capital-markets configuration enabled: information barrier engine, IB deal pipeline, research distribution and readership, buy-side relationship coverage, sales and trading desk integration, FINRA Rule 2241 attestation, SEC Rule 17a-4 retention, and MiFID II EU-tier retention where applicable.
How does Strkr handle MNPI and information barriers for a capital-markets firm?
Information barriers configure per record type and per field. A firm with sell-side research alongside IB configures a barrier so research personnel see the research record set, IB personnel see the IB record set, and the controlled crossing points route through a wall-crossing protocol (the IB-to-research walk-up requires wall-crossing authorization from the compliance officer with specific MNPI classification). The audit log captures every cross-wall access attempt with user, timestamp, record, and business justification. The CCO reviews the cross-wall log weekly. For firms with multiple barriers (research vs IB vs principal investing vs trading), the barrier structure is a graph rather than a two-sided wall, which Strkr handles natively.
Does Strkr clear a FINRA cycle exam for a broker-dealer?
Yes. Strkr's capital-markets configuration ships to the FINRA Rule 17a-4 standard with 6-year retention and 3-year immediate accessibility. The 2022 amendments permit an audit-trail alternative to the historical WORM-equivalent storage, which Strkr implements with cryptographic hash chains, tamper-evident logging, and third-party time stamping. For firms that prefer traditional WORM-equivalent storage, Strkr integrates with a certified third-party WORM provider. FINRA Rule 2241 research-analyst independence attestation evidence pulls from the per-report compliance surface. The exam-prep export packages the broker-dealer evidence in the format FINRA examiners typically request. Firms have cleared FINRA cycle exams on the Strkr compliance posture; the posture documentation is available on request for compliance team review before signup.
How does the research-distribution and readership tracking work?
Research reports distribute to the institutional client list through the Strkr distribution surface. Per-client, per-report readership tracks: email open and click (if emailed), platform login and view time (if portal-distributed), download (if PDF), and follow-up actions (requested call with the analyst, forwarded to a colleague, requested model backup). The readership signal rolls up quarterly with the commission-allocation calculation that most firms run (readership weight, meeting attendance, corporate-access participation, trading-flow signal supplementing). For firms that participate in the II survey, the Greenwich survey, or run direct client votes, Strkr integrates the external vote data with the internal readership signal for the composite allocation. Quarterly commission-allocation reports typically run in 2 days on Strkr versus the 2-week spreadsheet exercise most firms are migrating from.
What is the pricing posture for a boutique IB vs a mid-market firm?
Strkr capital-markets configuration is per seat with the full product on every seat. A 50-banker boutique IB pays 50 seats plus the research-distribution and client-portal usage. A 180-user mid-market firm pays 180 seats. There is no tier bump at 100 users or 250 users. The compliance posture (information barriers, SEC Rule 17a-4 retention, MiFID II EU-tier retention, FINRA Rule 2241 attestation) ships on every seat. For boutique IBs on existing Excel-plus-SharePoint infrastructure, Strkr often lands within existing operations budget. For firms migrating from DealCloud, the three-year TCO delta typically runs 150,000 to 420,000 dollars for 50-to-120-user firms. Current capital-markets configuration pricing lives on the pricing page.
What is the migration path from DealCloud or Salesforce Financial Services Cloud?
Strkr has migration tools for DealCloud (via DealCloud API) and Salesforce FSC (via Salesforce APIs). The migration carries deal records, relationship records, custom fields, activity history, and compliance-evidence history. Information barrier configuration migrates from DealCloud's Intapp Walls or Salesforce sharing rules with a one-time mapping decision per barrier definition. Research-distribution-and-readership history migrates where the source tool retains the signal. Audit history preserves for compliance continuity. Most capital-markets migrations complete in 12 to 20 weeks for firms up to 200 users with a 4-week parallel-running period before cutover. The information-barrier verification is typically the deepest work in the migration because the compliance test cases must run through parallel to confirm no cross-wall leakage.
Which capital-markets subsector is Strkr not a good fit for?
The largest end of the sector (bulge-bracket investment banks, major market-making trading operations, firms with heavy custom development on Salesforce FSC plus Shield plus Event Monitoring) typically stays on an enterprise platform because the switching cost outweighs the gain in year one. For boutique IBs (up to 100 bankers), mid-market full-service firms (up to 300 users), buy-side relationship teams, and research-and-distribution teams at specialist firms, Strkr is a strong fit on compliance posture and three-year TCO. For firms that run heavily on specific trading-platform integrations (Bloomberg Terminal workflow, FactSet, specialist execution-management systems), the Strkr integration suite covers the common patterns with the open API available for firm-specific requirements.
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