A-Team Insight Author: Rollings Nicole
The Data Year Ahead: AI Comes of Age, Private Markets Become Less Opaque
2026 is set to be the year in which the evolutionary changes hinted in the past 12 months become established within the data landscape, according to expert predictions. Artificial intelligence will mature into the game-changing innovation it has promised for years and private markets, whose growth in importance in the past few years has been...
Why Outsourcing is Shifting from Cost Centre to Being a Catalyst for Transformation
By Sarva Srinivasan, Managing Director, NeoXam Americas. For decades, outsourcing across all industries has been synonymous with trimming the back office, streamlining headcount, and delegating so called non-core processes to third parties. But in the world of finance, the ground is well and truly shifting. As the asset management and servicing industries face mounting multi-asset...
Eleven Leading Data Lineage Solutions for Capital Markets
The ability to trace the journey of data from its origin to its final report is no longer a luxury but a regulatory and operational necessity. As firms grapple with the intensifying requirements of regulations such as BCBS 239, GDPR and the shifting landscape of MiFID II, the “black box” approach to data management has...
Data as a Product: From Collection to Control in Modern Markets
For much of the past decade, data strategy in capital markets focused on accumulation. Firms invested heavily in market data feeds, alternative datasets, data lakes, and analytics platforms. Yet despite this abundance, many organisations have still struggled to answer basic operational questions with confidence, particularly during periods of market stress. The problem is no longer...
Banks Should Optimise Collateral in 2026 to Lay the Groundwork for Greater Efficiency and Innovation
By James Pike, Chief Revenue Officer and Head of Strategy, Taskize. Collateral teams have been tested in 2025. Banks have weathered multiple bouts of high volatility, including the fallout from ‘Liberation Day’ and sell-offs over fears of a possible AI bubble. Sharp spikes in volatility across multiple asset classes have the potential to disrupt collateral...
From Silos to Sequencers: Why Core Trading Architectures Are Being Rewritten for 24/7 Markets
The most consequential changes facing financial markets technology in 2026 will not be driven by new asset classes or incremental latency gains, but by a fundamental rethinking of how trading systems are architected at their core. For decades, market participants have organised technology around functional silos: execution, risk, middle office, post-trade. These boundaries were reinforced...
Regulatory Developments 2026, a Cross-Jurisdictional Outlook
2026 regulatory themes are converging around the theme of continuous evidence – data quality, control effectiveness, and operational resilience demonstrated through repeatable artefacts rather than narrative attestations. In Europe, that direction is most explicit in ESMA’s data platform and supervisory tooling agenda, alongside the ESAs’ DORA-related coordination and oversight planning – see ESMA 2026 Annual...
smartTrade’s kACE Acquisition Signals the Next Phase of FX Derivatives Automation
smartTrade’s agreement to acquire kACE Financial from BGC Group underscores a decisive shift in institutional FX trading technology, as the market moves beyond connectivity-led platforms toward deeper pricing intelligence, derivatives automation, and converged front-office workflows. Under the terms of the transaction, kACE is valued at up to $119 million, comprising an initial $80 million payment...
DORA CTPP List Published, But Who’s Missing?
When the European Supervisory Authorities (ESMA, EBA and EIOPA) published the first list of Critical ICT Third-Party Providers (CTPPs) in November 2025, the step marked a major milestone in the rollout of the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA). The regulators described the designations as “crucial” to implementing the Union-level oversight framework. Yet despite the significance...
What an Actimize Sale Might Mean for Surveillance and FinCrime Technology
When news emerged that NICE is preparing to sell its Actimize division – long regarded as one of the most established full-stack platforms for financial crime, fraud, and surveillance – the immediate headlines focused on valuation. With reports suggesting a price in the range of US$1.5–2 billion, the deal would be one of the RegTech...