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.
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 …
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.
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.
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.
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.
The need for financial institutions to accurately gauge their exposure to myriad sources of risk has seldom, if ever, been greater. The credit crisis toward the end of the last decade must have made that clear, and if bankers managed to avoid getting the message back then, the point has been driven home ever since by regulators around the world
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.
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.
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.
ABN Amro plans to implement the Temenos WealthSuite integrated wealth management platform for its international private banking business. It will also be able to extend the use of the T24 core system to its private banking and diamond & jewellery business, giving it one platform with one operating model across multiple business lines.
With the recent pension reforms opening up a plethora of investment options, financial services providers need to capitalise on the opportunity to create a value-led digital customer proposition
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.
Long-term investors are deeply concerned about their ability to find liquidity, with nearly 90% afraid that predatory high-frequency traders are preying on their flows, according to a new survey by block-trading network Liquidnet.
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.
Temenos has moved into the fund administration business with a €235 million acquisition of Luxembourg-based Multifonds, which counts a number of Tier 1 institutions as users of its fund administration platform.
Fixed income markets have historically been a bastion of high-touch trading, with manual processes, large tickets and little standardisation. But as recent years have seen inventory slashed and balance sheets cut in face of rising regulatory pressure, finding liquidity has become more of a challenge. A group of banks are hoping to reinvigorate the market though a standardised messaging system.
Fenergo has enhanced its Regulatory Rules Engine software, used by investment banks investment banks and capital market firms for client lifecycle. The software enables financial institutions to comply with a range of regulatory frameworks based on a single, out-of-the-box repository of rules.
In the Oscar-winning film The Theory of Everything the lead character Stephen Hawking lays out his vision of a single equation that explains all physical aspects of the universe. This rarefied scientific debate has echoes in the more prosaic world of Transaction Cost Analysis in financial markets, where the availability of more granular data coupled with pressure from regulators is driving a whole new wave of research and analysis, says ITG’s Michael Sparkes.
Continuing its policy of offering products that fit across user workflows, Bloomberg has moved in to the transaction reporting space in Europe. The company’s Trade Order Management System has been granted approval by the Financial Conduct Authority to report securities with an ISIN and OTC derivatives as part of the UK’s Approved Reporting Mechanisms regime.
Capital markets firms are losing their intellectual property too easily to competitors, business partners and third parties. Most companies could benefit from a tougher approach to IP, including licencing agreements and more use of patents, according to a new report by analyst firm Aite.
The cyber-attack on Sony Pictures at the end of last year highlighted something that IT and security people in financial services have known for some time – the modern networked environment is far less secure than most people are prepared to admit …
Avox, the DTCC’s legal entity reference data subsidiary, has launched a series of web-based application programming interfaces designed to support faster access to data, including legal entity identifiers, legal names, addresses, industry classifications and corporate hierarchies.
From the early days of internet distribution, New York-based Alacra has been aggregating reference data. Chief executive Steve Goldstein told David Bannister the company’s story
SmartStream Technologies has acquired the assets of IBM’s Algorithmics Collateral solution and will add it to its existing solutions for the automation of the end-to-end post trade lifecycle, rebranding it as TLM Collateral Management. The system provides collateral lifecycle automation for buy- and sell-side institutions, custodians and asset servicers, large and small.
When first reports of an integrated communications project that had attracted a $66 million investment from a consortium of banks led by Goldman Sachs appeared last year, there was an element of cloak and dagger about the enterprise. The truth is both more prosaic and more interesting according to David Gurle, chief executive and founder of the company behind it.
ICAP is combining its EBS foreign exchange and BrokerTec fixed income electronic trading platforms into one business unit. The change is“an internal management reorganisation” and the platforms will remain separate for the foreseeable future.
The regulatory spotlight is shining on high frequency traders and dark pools, but the technological changes that have driven down trading costs for everyone will not be reversed. With market making increasingly the preserve of profit maximising algorithmic traders, there is a growing responsibility on institutions to control where their trades are going and how they are being executed. Those that do not are writing checks to HFTs with clients’ money
Societe Generale Securities Services (SGSS) has launched Global Broker-Dealer Services, an outsourcing solution aimed at institutional brokers, mid-tier banks and broker dealers. The fully integrated global service includes middle-office services, back-office processing and post-trade services.
