Connect to the Saudi Exchange (Tadawul)

What is the Saudi Exchange (Tadawul)?

The Saudi Exchange, widely known as Tadawul, is the principal securities market of Saudi Arabia and the largest exchange in the Middle East and North Africa region. It operates under the supervision of the Capital Market Authority (CMA), the regulator responsible for overseeing and developing the Kingdom's capital market. Over the past decade, Saudi Arabia's markets have opened progressively to international institutional investors, making Tadawul a focal point for those seeking exposure to the region's economy.

As the deepest and most liquid venue in the MENA region, Tadawul lists the Kingdom's leading companies across financials, energy, materials, telecoms, and consumer sectors. For global asset managers, brokers, and banks building a Gulf and emerging-markets footprint, a reliable, compliant route to Tadawul has become a core requirement rather than a nice-to-have.

Instruments traded on Tadawul

Tadawul supports a broad and growing range of asset classes, allowing institutions to build diversified Saudi and regional portfolios from a single venue. ZagTrader's multi-asset architecture is designed to handle these instrument types within one consistent workflow.

• Equities — listed shares of Saudi-domiciled companies across major sectors.
• Sukuk and bonds — Shariah-compliant sukuk alongside conventional debt instruments.
• ETFs — exchange-traded funds offering diversified, index-style exposure.
• REITs — real estate investment trusts for listed property exposure.
• Derivatives — listed derivatives that support hedging and risk-management strategies.

How ZagTrader connects to Tadawul

ZagTrader provides institutional access to Tadawul through certified direct exchange connectivity, and through ECNs and regional hubs where applicable. Orders flow from the trading desk to the venue over resilient, monitored links built for the latency, throughput, and reliability that institutional trading demands.

Connectivity is delivered as part of ZagTrader's integrated Order Management System (OMS) and Execution Management System (EMS). Traders work from a unified blotter that spans Tadawul and other supported markets, applying pre-trade compliance checks, smart order handling, and real-time position and risk monitoring before an order ever reaches the exchange. Because order management, execution, and post-trade processing share the same platform, there are no brittle hand-offs between disconnected systems — a single source of truth runs from inception to booking.

Settlement, custody, and corporate actions

Post-trade processing for Tadawul is anchored by the market's central infrastructure. The Securities Depository Center, known as Edaa, acts as the central securities depository, while Muqassa, the Securities Clearing Center, provides central clearing. Saudi equities settle on a T+2 basis under a delivery-versus-payment (DVP) model, where the transfer of securities and the corresponding payment occur in tandem to minimize settlement risk.

ZagTrader's back-office capabilities are built to align with this lifecycle. The platform supports trade confirmation and allocation, settlement instruction generation, and reconciliation against custodian and depository records. Custody positions are tracked alongside live trading activity, and corporate actions — such as dividends, rights issues, and other entitlement events — are captured and processed so that holdings and books stay accurate. Bringing front-office execution and back-office processing together reduces operational friction and the risk of breaks.

Why access Tadawul through ZagTrader

Choosing ZagTrader as your route to the Saudi Exchange means consolidating execution, risk, compliance, and operations onto one front-to-back platform rather than stitching together multiple vendors. Compliance workflows are designed to align with CMA requirements, and the platform's reporting and record-keeping support obligations relevant to operating in the Saudi market, including those associated with ZATCA-related tax and regulatory considerations.

For institutions with Islamic-finance mandates, ZagTrader's support for sukuk and the ability to administer Shariah-compliant trading workflows make it well suited to Gulf market participants. As a single multi-asset OMS/EMS with order routing and integrated post-trade processing, ZagTrader lets desks scale into Tadawul and the wider MENA region without re-platforming.

• One multi-asset OMS/EMS for Tadawul and additional markets.
• CMA-aligned compliance workflows with audit-ready record keeping.
• Support for Shariah-compliant trading and sukuk instruments.
• Reporting designed for Saudi regulatory and ZATCA-related obligations.
• Integrated front-to-back flow from order entry through settlement.