A-Team Insight Author: Rollings Nicole
UBS AML Enforcement Exposes Underlying Data Weaknesses
A coordinated US enforcement action against UBS Financial Services has exposed how incomplete data feeds, faulty system configuration and weak customer-risk controls can undermine an automated anti-money laundering (AML) programme. FINRA found that UBS failed to monitor adequately more than 60,000 foreign-currency wires worth over $10 billion between January 2019 and June 2023. The deficiencies...
Facteus Expands Data Coverage with a Focus on Signal Continuity
As alternative data becomes more deeply embedded in investment research and quantitative models, the quality of a dataset is increasingly about more than its size. Coverage and granularity remain important, but so too does the ability to maintain a consistent, representative signal as underlying data sources and panels evolve. That challenge is central to the...
Multiplying the Value of Unstructured Data
Financial institutions have spent years expanding the range of data available to investment, trading and risk teams. Increasingly, however, the challenge is not obtaining more data but making sense of what they already have. Unstructured data is estimated to account for 80-90% of the information generated withinfinancial institutions, encompassing everything from regulatory filings and earnings-call...
AI Expands Buy-Side Compliance Remit as Resources Remain Flat
Four in five respondents to a survey of US investment advisers use artificial intelligence, but many have yet to put testing, validation and third-party oversight behind that adoption. Around 60% of chief compliance officers also hold another executive role, so the added AI duties sit alongside their existing responsibilities. Amended Regulation S-P also requires advisers...
Ripple Investments in ZILO and Licuido Expand Transfer Agency, Tokenisation Capabilities
With a focus on providing additional services in the capital markets, payments and liquidity infrastructure provider Ripple has made strategic investments into two companies: ZILO, which provides transfer agency asset technology, and Licuido, a tokenisation platform. Both investments – which collectively bring regulated transfer agency, issuance, and collateral mobility to Ripple’s XRP Ledger (XRPL) –...
Institutions Eye Stablecoins for Payments and Wall Street 2.0; But Understanding and Planning is Key to Success
It was just a dozen years ago that the first stablecoins emerged. The first entrants were BitUSD, a crypto-backed coin, and Realcoin, which was fiat backed. While BitUSD lasted just a few years, Realcoin – which quickly rebranded to Tether – became the undisputed leader in a space now valued at more than $300 billion....
Ten European Banks Kickstart RL1 DLT; Look to Establish Common Infrastructure for Tokenisation Use Cases
Ten European financial institutions are establishing the RL1 Cooperative to create a neutral, member-owned, pan-European DLT utility for tokenised assets, digital money and next-generation financial markets applications. Created as a European Cooperative Society (SCE) based in Luxembourg, the founding members of RL1 – for Regulated Layer One – comprise ABN Amro, Cecabank, Chartered Investment, Crédit...
OneChronos Brings Combinatorial Matching to European Equities
Periodic auctions came to Europe as an answer to the speed race. They are now routine. Several operators run them, and randomised auction lengths and speed-neutral matching have become standard rather than special. A venue arriving today has to say what it does that the others do not. OneChronos, which began production trading on its...
Fanatics Buys BGC’s Exchange and Clearinghouse to Bring Prediction Markets In-House
Global sports platform Fanatics has agreed to acquire Water Street Labs, a CFTC-registered Designated Contract Market (DCM), and CX Clearinghouse, a registered Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO), from BGC Group. The acquisition gives Fanatics direct ownership of the exchange and clearing infrastructure that will enable it to expand its prediction markets business. Alongside the transaction, the...
ICE Adds Institutional Bond Execution with $6 Billion MarketAxess Acquisition
Intercontinental Exchange has agreed to acquire MarketAxess Holdings for $167 per share in cash, valuing the electronic bond trading platform at approximately $6 billion in equity and $5.7 billion in enterprise value. The price is a 33% premium to MarketAxess’s closing price on 29 July. MarketAxess connects around 2,100 institutional investors and broker-dealers in more...