Post-trade technology company Kynetix has launched a blockchain consortium, focused on using distributed ledger technology in commodities markets. The move comes as financial institutions increasingly explore ways to integrate the blockchain concept into mainstream financial services.
It is a well-known fact that banks have two types of technology: Cold War-era IBM mainframes running Cobol-based batch programmes and Evil Genius HFT systems. The mundane truth is that any financial services operation will have a range of hardware and software systems of different vintages and spend a lot of time and money living with the consequences.
Either the distributed ledger is the greatest revolution in financial services for a generation, or it will make little difference to anything, according to the strongly divided opinions expressed by speakers at the Mondo Visione Exchange Forum in London last week.
More transparency is urgently needed to restore trust in the FX industry, according to a new report by foreign exchange MTF LMAX Exchange – but to make that happen, the industry will have to collaborate.
SETL, the institutional payment and settlement infrastructure based on blockchain technology, claims to have which has broken the 1 billion transactions-per-day capacity barrier for blockchain movements in a test network.
Major financial market infrastructures (FMIs) and central banks have thrown their weight behind a Swift initiative to prevent further fragmentation of the ISO 20022 messaging standard as its adoption grows by signing a charter backing principles to harmonise implementations.
Cyber attacks cost little to perpetrate, but plenty to prevent. A focus on external and internal factors will help financial institutions to mitigate the threat.
T2S, Europe’s harmonised settlement platform, is live. With a series of migration waves scheduled up until full live operation in July 2017, the next few years are likely to be characterised by intense activity as market participants finalise their strategies …
Deutsche Bank’s Research unit is launching a new set of proprietary foreign exchange positioning indices based on data from its Autobahn FX trading platform. Called Corax – Categorised ORderflow from Autobahn FX – the indices will be published every Wednesday in the Corax Positioning Report.
With global investment into the fintech arena growing at an astonishing rate, it is only a matter of time before the corporate sector begins to feel its true force. Fred DiCocco, head of market management, BNY Mellon Treasury Services, discusses how banks are adapting. Fintech is triggering a monumental shift in the payments space, with […]
London Stock Exchange and The Depository Trust & Clearing are partnering to provide clients with a connection to the LSE’s UnaVista Approved Reporting Mechanism. The service will allow DTCC clients to comply with the Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation through their current connection from DTCC’s Global Trade Repository.
Saxo Bank is to allow access to its multi-asset trading and back office infrastructure through a new open API that will allow developers and partners to integrate Saxo’s trading functionality into their own applications and systems.
Nine major global investment banks have formed a partnership to explore the potential of distributed ledger technology in financial markets. The project, led by financial technology company R3, aims to create early standards for the emerging technology that will make it easier and more efficient as it grows.
The London Stock Exchange has sold its Proquote market data and retail trading services business to Australian financial technology specialist Iress, which is expanding its capital markets and funds operations in the UK.
Post-trade processing company Bloomberg STP Solutions and post-trade and risk specialist Traiana have begun a joint effort to develop a straight-through processing infrastructure for FX options. The partners say it will help to reduce post-trade costs for market participants, which have typically remained higher than execution costs.
The International Securities Services Association adopted a set of compliance principles to address the “critical challenges” posed by financial crime. The new principles aim to establish “a clear global standard for the opening and maintenance of cross-border securities accounts”.
BNY Mellon expects to have its SunGard InvestOne system back to normal today following testing over the weekend and the US Labor Day holiday and have caught up on the generation of net asset values for clients.
Global capital markets specialist, Hatstand, has launched a cyber-security risk assessment service that will enable businesses to better understand the current state of their preparedness against the risk of cyber-attacks and identify any shortfalls in their existing governance programmes.
Electronic trading specialist Orc has launched a high speed connection to Borsa İstanbul. which brought all the Turkish capital markets exchanges under one roof in 2013. “Turkey is becoming an increasingly attractive market, with a steady rise in trading activity and demand from the region,” said Orc.
The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures and the International Organization of Securities Commissions are seeking comment on proposals for harmonising the Unique Transaction Identifier used to be used for OTC derivatives trade reporting.
Nomura’s equities execution unit, Instinet Europe, is to offer cash management and payment services to purchasers of its investment research products following authorisation from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority to operate as a payment institution.
Project Neptune, the fixed income trading initiative between a group of 42 large banks and asset managers, has gone live with its pilot production network, bringing the project closer to its ‘hard’ platform later this year.
International derivatives market GMEX is due to go live on Friday after more than two years of development. Created by co-founders Hirander Misra and Vj Angelo, the new exchange has just signed Bank of America Merrill Lynch and will start by offering futures contracts backed by German derivatives giant Eurex.
Thomson Reuters has added foreign exchange trading capabilities for corporate treasurers to its financial markets desktop Thomson Reuters Eikon, linking it to FXall QuickTrade, a request for stream service.
Regulations aimed at transparency across financial markets may be making things simpler for the regulators, but they are making life more complex for banks, according to Sven Ludwig, senior vice president, risk management and analytics EMEA, at SunGard.
ICAP has become the first UK institution to implement a range of enterprise data governance systems from Oracle, replacing a legacy process involving manual spreadsheet maintenance and frequent e-mail exchanges.
Post-trade market infrastructure the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation has launched a new centralised data provisioning service, DTCC Data Products and expanded its exchange traded funds and ISO 20022 corporate actions data offerings.
Eleven financial associations have published their support for a new set of derivatives reporting standards developed by ISDA, which is calling for greater cross-border harmonisation of data standards – even if that means some national laws will have to be amended.
TABB Group forecasts global compliance spending among capital markets firms will some increase 7.5% to 8% in 2015, reaching $2.592 billion , and growing at a similar pace for 2016, driven by global regulations that require institutions to expand coverage, enhance existing capabilities and standardise compliance solutions and processes.
Swift has formally launched a new business intelligence solution for securities market participants following the completion of an early adopter programme. Watch for Securities is “ready for full scale use” by local and global custodians, investment banks, asset managers and broker/dealers, allowing them to monitor and gain business insights from their network traffic.
Karla McKenna has been named head of standards at the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation on a year’s secondment from Citi, where she is director of market practice and standards.
Citi has launched Futures trading functionality on Citi Velocity, the trading platform which provides clients with access to Citi’s research and liquidity across FX, Rates and Credit. Launched in January 2012, Velocity 2.0 is continuously upgraded to include new features and asset classes. It provides clients with an integrated trading suite enabling fastest possible execution […]
Treasury and capital markets software specialist Calypso Technology has developed “an industrialised blueprint for reducing complexity and cost in banks”. The Calypso Bank-in-a-Box was developed in collaboration with a group of global banks to consolidate and document their processes and systems in the face of market and regulatory changes.
Three-quarters of market participants use the FIX protocol for confirmation and affirmation of their transactions, according to a new survey released by financial industry standards body the FIX Trading Community.
The International Swaps and Derivatives Association has launched UTIPrefix.org, a service that enables counterparties to obtain a unique trade identifier (UTI) prefix for derivatives trade reporting.
A decade ago, one of the driving factors behind outsourcing was reducing cost and headcount. However, with the growing regulatory and compliance burden, firms are increasingly becoming more cautious about outsourcing.
IG Group has launched a trading app for the Apple Watch, which it says is one of the first of its kind. The Apple Watch is due to be released on 24 April.
Hotspot, the institutional foreign exchange market owned and operated by BATS Global Markets, is to expand its European presence with the launch of its first Europe-based FX matching engine later this year. The new matching engine will be located in the London Slough Campus data centres and will target Europe and Asia and specific FX currencies that dominate the European and Asian trading hours.
Financial market regulations across the globe are increasingly focusing on risk management. This includes ensuring it is clear who firms are trading with and for, and confirming that firms can identify the instruments being traded. As a result, the field of reference data is increasingly held under the regulatory microscope and that lens extends to the standards used to identify financial instruments, writes Chris Pickles.
A three-party alliance between alternative FX market LMAX Exchange, retail FX provider Z.com Trade and retail FX trading platform MT4 have built a combined liquidity pool, which aims to provide ‘last look’ liquidity to a wider market.
