Over our 25 years of developing and maintaining commodity trading software, we have watched a massive evolution of the software metals traders use on a daily basis. What is particularly striking is the current rapid pace of change, driven by new technologies including AI.
Even a decade ago, there were still discussions around whether CTRM systems were really needed or whether some metals traders could get by using spreadsheets. Since then, we've seen the emergence of Commodity Management Systems which, with their extensive additional features and straightforward Cloud implementations, are usurping the predominant position of the Commodity Trading and Risk Management (CTRM) System. And thanks to the flexibility and scalability of these modern Commodity Management Systems, new technologies such as AI are being rapidly incorporated into the Commodity Management ecosystem, taking the CTRM from a niche risk management tool into a connected system that powers the entire trading organisation.
That includes our own AI, NaNi, which is natively integrated into CommOS, our Commodity Management System, so you can see and manage your entire business through one chat-driven interface.
With that in mind, if you know that your organisation needs to improve its commodity trading risk management, especially if the software is new to you, it can be difficult to know where to start. This quick guide is designed to provide a basic overview of CTRM and Commodity Management technology, including AI, for metals traders so that you can better understand your options.
Metals CTRM and Commodity Management quick questions
- What is a metals CTRM?
- Why do I need a metals CTRM?
- What's the difference between CTRM and Commodity Management Systems?
- How does Commodity Management support metals supply chains?
- Does a Commodity Management System do everything?
- What does AI mean for metals CTRM and Commodity Management?
- How can CTRM/Commodity Management support ESG compliance and traceability?
What is a metals CTRM?
If you're not already familiar with the term 'CTRM', it is a Commodity Trading and Risk Management System. These systems help commodity traders manage buying, selling, and hedging commodities. They typically focus mainly on financial risks, but can also mitigate operational risks. A good CTRM system should help your risk managers create a more efficient operation grounded in real-time data and risk controls, and provide the front office with the data they need to make faster, better decisions.
And a metals Commodity Trading & Risk Management system has more functionality for metals and concentrates than generalised CTRMs can offer.
Whilst all commodities share some features such as contract management, invoicing, and allocating stock, concentrates traders in particular are likely to discover that a generic CTRM does not, in fact, have the complete set of functions that they need.
When Gen10 developed functionality for metals and concentrates traders within CommOS, we worked directly with metals traders to understand exactly what additional features were needed. And over the years we have worked with several other client metals and concentrates traders to further refine this functionality. So, we know from experience that a CTRM or Commodity Management System needs to have been designed specifically for metals if it is to be able to support all the complexity in the field.
To take just pricing as an example, you can explore some of the metals-specific functionality in CommOS here, it can include:
- Premiums & penalties/discounts,
- Logistics and processing fees for multiple shipment schedules,
- FX and interest,
- Provisional invoicing,
- and, of course, live P&L and MtM reports, amongst other features.
And because CommOS was designed with flexibility in mind, the automation workflows and pricing calculations can all be adapted to your own unique processes.
Why do I need a metals CTRM?
Metals trading is becoming increasingly complex, and this complexity creates risk. Pricing is set to become more volatile; we are seeing an uptick in geopolitical tensions and constantly shifting tariff regimes, as well as more protectionism in producing countries. On top of this, the regulatory landscape is not becoming any simpler, particularly when it comes to ESG, carbon reporting, and traceability legislation.
This complexity means that not only do metals and concentrates traders need to manage more data than ever before, but they also need the systems and tools in place to be able to demonstrate that they are accurately managing and reporting on this data. A good metals CTRM system makes comprehensive, real-time data management simple.
It breaks down organisational silos, reduces the operational risks of copying information across systems, and ensures that reports are updated in real-time as traders go about their day, with no waiting for colleagues to report on what they've been working on in a separate system. A CTRM like CommOS can also automate a lot of your workflows, such as creating and emailing documents to the correct counterparty or approval process, updating your ERP and payments systems, and notifying colleagues when they need to act.
Some of the advantages of Gen10's CommOS specifically for metals include:
- A "component mode" for concentrates contracts that allows you to price all assays' premiums and discounts within one contract.
- A formula engine that automatically calculates assay pricing, and populates your MtM, P&L, documents & systems with the results.
- A wide range of quality options including the ability to add premiums and discounts to assays, grades, shapes, delivery terms and more.
- Management of weight/size conversions, processing fees, and shipment details such as incoterms and delivery optionality.
- Allocation controls to ensure stock meets all the quality requirements of a given contract.
- The ability to automatically update documents with a click if an assay changes after inspection, also causing their MtM and P&L to update automatically.
- The ability to add multiple exchanges and create composite curves with ease, as well as tiered FX and interest calculations.
- Provisional and final invoicing over a Quotation Period (QP) based on your chosen exchange(s).
And these metal-specific features are on top of the standard workflow engines, automation, logistics, hedging and audit features we provide for all commodities.
What's the difference between a CTRM and a Commodity Management System?
Commodity Management Systems offer a considerably broader set of functionalities than the older CTRM systems. They developed in response to traders' frustrations with CTRM limitations, especially in the areas of supply chain, logistics and operations. One of the major differences between a CTRM and a Commodity Management System is that whereas a CTRM focuses on financial risk, a Commodity Management System also helps traders mitigate against many other risk factors, with a strong focus on operational risk.
For example, CommOS allows merchants to manage the full commodity lifecycle, bringing together their entire business in one connected system. Its expanded functionality includes CRM and counterparty risk, financial risk management, deal capture and contract creation, pricing, invoicing, and the ability for operators to manage every aspect of commodities logistics, processing, and pricing within the Commodity Management System.
This also means that traceability and other compliance reporting is managed entirely within the one system. Your entire team can see all the data associated with each virtual lot and can trace stock from purchase, across any processing and shipping, to sale with ease. There is no manual copying of information between systems to introduce operational risk or damage chain of custody data.
How does Commodity Management support metals supply chains?
As mentioned above, a Commodity Management System takes your risk management software out of an isolated CTRM system and allows you to digitally transform your entire trading operation. This joined-up approach has benefits both for logistics teams and for the metals merchant as an organisation.
And it is particularly significant in the current trading environment. The risks that metals traders are exposed to have increased in number and disruptive impact over the last several years. Geopolitical risks, trade wars and tariffs are all having a serious impact and can change at the drop of a hat. Meanwhile the energy transition is changing demand patterns, market behaviour, and encouraging new entrants, all whilst ESG legislation is increasing the reporting burden on busy teams. Added to this is the fallout from high-profile metals fraud scandals and a general withdrawing of banks from the trade financing space compounding the operational and data management challenges across trading firms.
This is why it is so important to be using software that simplifies trading processes and removes as much duplication, administration, and risk from your data flows as possible. Profit in metals trading comes from understanding and valuing quality data, regional arbitrage, logistics and costs, as well as clients, suppliers, markets, and the risks inherent in each of these. By connecting all your data and all your internal teams, your people can access the data and insights they need to make decisions fast, and with certainty.
A Commodity Management System should pull in data from various supply chain partners, regardless of format, and consolidate it into one centralised platform. This includes information from warehouse documents, inspection companies, laboratories, purchase and sale contracts, and vessel tracking systems, among other tools, so that you really do have access to all your supply chain data.
With its automated workflows, seamless data flows, and comprehensive risk controls, CommOS creates real value and real time savings for busy logistics professionals:
Automated Document Creation & Workflows
- Automatically generates shipping documents based on assay information already in the system
- Automated workflows progress tasks and documents to the appropriate next stage (internal approvals or external communications with counterparties/inspection companies)
- Sends documents to relevant counterparties with a single click
- Manages the complete logistics of sampling and inspections
- Automatically updates system data after inspections are complete
Alerts & Risk Controls
- Built-in alerts and calendar notifications ensure smooth handovers and prevent items from being missed or lost in email inboxes
- Checks that allocated stock is within the contract's quality/assay tolerance levels
- Alerts for oversights such as missing mandatory documents or unpaid customs duties
- Automatic OFAC sanctions list screening
Pricing Optionality
- Create pricing optionality based on delivery port, incoterms, and other contract parameters
- Automatically recalculate invoices and duties once delivery options are selected
Integrated Inventory Management
- Create strategies based on locations, transportation modes, warehousing strategies, and other variables
- Make allocation decisions that consider all open positions, not just current inventories, using live data from trading teams
- Complete oversight of all inventory, down to integrating with vessel trackers for container-level visibility and updated ETAs whilst at sea
And the risk management extends beyond the logistics team. Connecting teams means your traders can create better scenario planning and what-if analysis straight away based on the live situation – particularly important if there is a supply chain shock or disruptive event. And all teams can make faster decisions in response to changing conditions as they all have access to the complete live data, with all positions available at all times. This creates more resilient supply chains and an organisation that is positioned to respond when disruptive events occur.
As well as meaning that your teams don't need to wait for spreadsheets to be updated by others, the very real operational risk of errors created by copying information into and between systems, version control issues, and misalignment between teams is also significantly reduced, as there is no need to copy information for the benefit of other teams.
Does a Commodity Management System do everything?
Although Commodity Management Systems were designed to fill the functionality gap left by CTRM systems, both commodity trading and the systems that support it are constantly evolving. We want our clients to be able to make the most of every new technology and point solution, whether that's a vessel tracking system, carbon calculator, or new AI tools.
A single Commodity Management System is unlikely to be the best solution for every single use case as new technologies develop, and that's why the best Commodity Management Systems, like CommOS, are designed to be flexible and interoperable. This means that you can connect in other data sources and systems with two-way live integrations, so they become part of the one platform, transferring even more information seamlessly across your business.
This 'joining the dots' approach means operators update a shipment once, and that information automatically flows to traders, risk managers, and compliance teams, eliminating manual copying, reducing errors, and freeing your people to focus on strategic activities that drive value. AI is the clearest example of a technology that depends on this joined-up data, and the next section looks at what it can do for metals traders.
What does AI mean for metals CTRM and Commodity Management?
AI in commodity trading is only as useful as its understanding of your business. Many traders already use AI tools day to day, but when those tools sit outside the core system they can’t answer complex questions about the live book. In metals, AI needs to work inside the system where your contracts, shipments, prices and positions live, and it needs to follow your processes exactly. Four things matter most:
- It has to understand what is actually happening in the business. Contracts, shipments, assays, stock, positions and costs need to be connected in one place, so the AI sees the live position rather than a summary, a copy, or a spreadsheet that was last updated on Friday.
- The data has to be structured, and the AI has to understand it. AI can find and extract assays, quality terms, quotation periods, premiums and penalties, incoterms and delivery options, even when they sit as free text in a document. The value comes from knowing how each one applies. Does an assay affect the price? If it changes, does the pricing tier change as well as the calculation? When does a Quotation Period start and end, and how does that feed into the pricing? The systems need to be able to structure the data the AI extracts and connect it to the way your business works. This gives the AI the context it needs to follow each of those numbers through to MtM, P&L and invoices.
- It has to follow every process precisely. Your pricing formulas, approval steps and allocation rules are how you manage risk. An AI that approximates them or improvises around them creates exactly the operational risk a CTRM exists to remove, so it needs guardrails that keep it working within the same engines, workflows and controls as the rest of the system.
- It has to get the detail exactly right, down to the rounding. In metals, small numbers carry real money. A payable percentage, an assay deduction or a penalty per fraction of a percent has to be rounded to exactly the number of decimal places your contract specifies, every time, on every lot. That takes guardrails, so that every figure comes from the system’s own calculation engine, applying your rounding rules exactly, and the AI never works it out for itself.
This is where NaNi comes in. NaNi is Gen10’s agentic AI assistant. She sits directly inside CommOS, so she applies AI to the live information behind each trade. She can draft a contract from the text of an email or your comments in the chat, compare a contract against your usual terms, or give you a live report directly in the chat. These are the kind of repetitive, detail-heavy tasks that take up a lot of a trader’s day. And because CommOS already holds the details described above, as structured data with a clear audit trail, her answers reflect your actual contracts, so people spend less time re-keying and checking, and more time on decisions.
How can a CTRM/CMS support ESG compliance and traceability requirements?
ESG compliance is becoming increasingly rigorous, and the pace of change in ESG reporting is also accelerating. The good news is that much of the sustainability reporting challenge is simply a question of having the right data management processes in place.
A metals Commodity Management System should have all the flexibility and optionality to manage new data fields, workflows, and reports, meaning that it should allow you to add additional sustainability and quality data to your processes without much disruption or additional work for traders. Gen10's CommOS has this flexibility as standard, and we are used to adding new sustainability and traceability features as the need arises.
Alongside the actual management of sustainability data, the real benefit of using a metals Commodity Management System is that your organisation can prove that it has the systems in place to accurately maintain and report on this data. Reporting should be automatic, meaning that there is no reporting burden on your team, but also no operational risk from copying or typing. The information is all processed automatically so your reports are verifiably accurate and always up to date.
And because a CMS manages all your logistics too, it provides a complete chain of custody record for traceability purposes. Then, by adding in additional point solutions as needed, like integrating with vessel trackers and carbon calculators, you can build a more accurate picture of each journey's actual emissions. And again, these systems' outputs are directly linked to specific shipments and contracts, with no need for manual copying and the operational risks this would create.
With schemes such as the EU CBAM requiring payment for carbon emissions, and penalising those who rely on generic estimates, real-world operational data can represent a significant cost saving compared to relying on the industry defaults.
Conclusion: taking your CTRM into the supply chain with a CMS is essential in the current metals landscape
The metals trading landscape is evolving faster than ever before. With increasing complexity around pricing, heightened geopolitical tensions, and mounting ESG compliance requirements, legacy systems simply can't keep pace, and can even pose a risk to the business.
What metals and concentrates traders need now is a comprehensive solution that not only manages financial risk but also breaks down operational silos, automates workflows, and provides the real-time visibility required to make confident decisions in volatile markets.
A purpose-built Commodity Management System like CommOS goes beyond traditional CTRM functionality to support your entire trading operation, from deal capture and pricing through to logistics, compliance, and traceability. It is also built for AI. NaNi works directly within CommOS, using its structured, connected data and following your processes, so AI can bring real business value to the people running your trades.
With metals-specific features developed in collaboration with traders who understand the unique complexities of concentrates, ores, and refined metals, CommOS is designed to adapt to your processes rather than forcing you to adapt to the software.
Whether you're looking to improve risk management, streamline operations, put AI to work on your trading data, or prepare for the next wave of sustainability reporting requirements, now is the time to ensure your systems can support your ambitions.
Ready to see how CommOS and NaNi can transform your metals trading? Book a demo now
This article was updated in October 2026 to reflect the current CTRM market and trading environment, and the launch of NaNi.