ThetaRay and Matrix USA Target AML’s ‘Last-Mile’ Modernisation Challenge

Financial institutions facing intensifying regulatory expectations around anti-money laundering (AML) analytics are exploring ways to introduce advanced detection capabilities without dismantling long-established compliance infrastructures. A newly announced partnership between ThetaRay and Matrix USA targets this challenge, positioning AI as an overlay rather than a wholesale replacement for existing transaction monitoring systems.

Regulatory momentum is accelerating the shift. Initiatives led by the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), alongside the European Union’s incoming Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (AMLR) and the creation of the Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA), are pushing firms toward more sophisticated analytical approaches. Supervisory expectations increasingly emphasise demonstrable effectiveness in detecting financial crime rather than simple adherence to procedural compliance frameworks.

For many banks and FinTechs, however, the practical constraint lies in the architecture of their current AML systems. Transaction monitoring environments often rely on rules engines that have evolved over decades and underpin mission-critical compliance programmes. Replacing them outright can be operationally risky and prohibitively expensive.

The partnership between ThetaRay and Matrix USA is framed around that operational reality. Matrix USA brings experience integrating AML and financial-crime technology across global banking environments, including firms operating hybrid or legacy infrastructures. ThetaRay contributes its Cognitive AI detection engine and investigation tooling, designed to operate alongside existing controls.

“Banks want to modernize, but many operate mission-critical AML programs that were built over decades,” said Lior Blik, CEO of Matrix USA. “This partnership gives them a practical path forward: enhance their current systems with AI, adopt better analytics, and meet regulatory expectations—without rebuilding their entire stack.”

The joint approach centres on deploying machine-learning-driven scoring and anomaly detection as an additional analytical layer on top of existing rules-based monitoring platforms. Rather than replacing legacy systems, the objective is to augment them with behavioural analytics and automated investigation capabilities.

“As global AML standards evolve, institutions need partners who understand both the legacy landscape and the new AI-powered future,” said Idan Keret, Chief Revenue Officer at Matrix USA. “ThetaRay’s AI combined with Matrix’s delivery expertise allows banks to strengthen detection, reduce investigation workload, and move forward with confidence without throwing away their original investments.”

Industry conversations around AML transformation frequently reflect similar operational constraints. According to ThetaRay executives, banks increasingly want faster paths to modernisation that avoid multi-year technology rebuilds.

“Every conversation we’re having with banks right now comes back to the same issue: they don’t have time for another multi-year AML transformation. What they need is speed, certainty, and proof that AI can deliver results inside the systems they already run. This partnership is built around that commercial reality,” said Jeff Otten, Chief Revenue Officer at ThetaRay.

The broader strategic question, however, is not whether artificial intelligence will play a role in financial-crime compliance, but how it is deployed in a way that remains transparent, accountable and regulator-aligned.

“AML is entering its next phase. The question is no longer whether AI belongs in financial crime compliance, but how responsibly and effectively it’s deployed at scale. Partnerships like this are what turn innovation into infrastructure,” said Brad Levy, CEO of ThetaRay.

In practical terms, the collaboration focuses on combining ThetaRay’s AI-driven detection capabilities and investigation tooling with Matrix’s implementation and integration expertise. The goal is to enable banks to introduce machine-learning analytics, automate elements of alert investigation, and reduce false positives while preserving existing compliance platforms.

In AML compliance, the “last mile” is the operational stage where alerts generated by monitoring systems must be converted into defensible investigative outcomes – encompassing alert prioritisation, investigation workflows, analyst decision support, and ultimately suspicious activity reporting. Layering new analytical capabilities onto established rules-based systems offers institutions a pragmatic way to strengthen this stage of the compliance process while preserving existing technology investments, and helping firms prepare for evolving AML supervisory expectations across the U.S. and Europe through 2026.

Bite Investments Acquires Portfolio Intelligence Platform Untap

Bite Investments, a technology provider for the alternative investments sector, has announced the acquisition of Untap, a portfolio management and fund-intelligence platform. This move integrates Untap’s data capabilities into Bite Stream, Bite Investments’ flagship software, to enhance portfolio analytics and ESG reporting. The acquisition follows a period of strategic growth for the company, supported by recent investments from NewSpring Capital, Proof Point Capital, and Osage Venture Capital.

The integration of Untap allows Bite Stream to offer private-market managers a more comprehensive suite of tools, including AI-driven fund intelligence and KPI tracking. Untap’s flexible data model facilitates the collection of financial, operational, and qualitative information within a single environment. This assists managers in meeting the growing demand for transparency regarding return generation and fund performance, while also streamlining investor onboarding and communications.

Moving forward, the combined platform aims to bridge the gap between investor engagement and underlying portfolio data. While both platforms will continue to support their existing clients, the development roadmap focuses on unifying the user experience and strengthening data infrastructure. Legal and financial advice for the transaction was provided to Untap by Hart Brown, PwC, and Kitra Advisory.

Broadridge Integrates Crypto.com Into Global NYFIX Network

Broadridge Financial Solutions has integrated Crypto.com into its NYFIX order routing network, marking the first cryptocurrency expansion for the service in Asia. This collaboration allows institutional crypto orders to flow through the same FIX-based infrastructure used for traditional asset classes. By linking their technology, market participants on the NYFIX Marketplace can now route orders directly to Crypto.com, leveraging the platform’s liquidity and low-latency performance within a standardised, secure workflow.

The partnership aims to reduce operational friction and market fragmentation by providing consistent order routing and data handling via the industry-standard FIX protocol. For Crypto.com, the integration provides immediate access to Broadridge’s global network of over 2,200 buy-side and sell-side participants. This move reflects an increasing institutional demand for digital assets and Broadridge’s strategy to provide reliable, compliant connectivity across both traditional and emerging financial markets.

Orange Investment Advisors Modernises Operations with Clearwater Analytics’ Enfusion Platform

Orange Investment Advisors, a credit-focused investment manager, has successfully implemented Enfusion by Clearwater Analytics. The transition to the integrated front-to-back platform is designed to modernise operations across the firm’s structured credit portfolio, replacing fragmented legacy systems with a unified solution for portfolio and order management.

The deployment provides a single execution platform that integrates trading, compliance, and real-time data. By consolidating these functions, the firm can manage positions without the need to transfer data between disparate tools. Furthermore, the combination of Enfusion and Clearwater’s Beacon platform introduces advanced risk modelling capabilities, including scenario analysis, factor attribution, and stress testing based on a single, reconciled dataset.

This operational shift reduces the time required for manual reconciliation across the front, middle, and back offices. Consequently, Orange Investment Advisors can produce institutional-grade structured credit reports with greater speed and accuracy. These efficiencies allow the team to focus on higher-value tasks while providing clients with more transparent and timely reporting.

Nasdaq and Boerse Stuttgart Group Partner to Modernise European Post-Trade Infrastructure

Nasdaq has entered into a strategic partnership with Seturion, the Boerse Stuttgart Group’s pan-European settlement platform for tokenised assets. The collaboration aims to address the fragmentation of Europe’s capital markets by leveraging distributed ledger technology (DLT) to create a more unified settlement ecosystem. Initially focusing on structured products, Nasdaq’s European trading venues will connect to Seturion to facilitate the trading and settlement of tokenised securities.

The partnership seeks to improve market efficiency by reducing the operational complexity and costs associated with traditional post-trade processes. Seturion supports various asset classes on public and private DLTs, allowing for cash settlement against central bank money and on-chain cash. By maintaining alignment with European regulations, such as MiFID II and the DLT Pilot Regime, the initiative preserves trusted market structures while providing issuers and investors with faster, more cost-efficient settlement cycles.

Moving forward, Nasdaq and Seturion intend to expand this network to include a broader range of financial institutions, brokers, and issuers across Europe. This long-term expansion aims to accelerate the adoption of tokenised securities and streamline the European settlement landscape through a single, integrated platform.

Abrigo Acquires 360 View for CRM Incorporation

Compliance and lending software provider Abrigo has acquired 360 View, incorporating the London-based company’s customer relationship management and marketing automation tools.

The acquisition follows a series of investments by the company, which serves financial institutions, to integrate customer data with risk management and lending solutions.

Raleigh, North Carolina-based Abrigo’s chief executive Jay Blandford said that the 360 View capabilities would transform customer data into actionable intelligence.

“Financial institutions are looking for smarter, more practical ways to grow,” Blandford said. “These capabilities will build on our holistic approach to data analytics – an important part of our corporate strategy – to better serve customers in an increasingly competitive banking market. Together, we will help banks and credit unions move from fragmented data to a cohesive approach and measurable results.”

The modular platform includes referral tracking, automated onboarding and portfolio-level profitability insights.

Solidatus Unveils Agentic AI Assistant for Data Lineage

Solidatus has launched the Solidatus AI Lineage Assistant, deploying agentic artificial intelligence to automate the creation and maintenance of data maps across enterprise estates.

The tool addresses regulatory requirements such as BCBS 239 and the EU AI Act by documenting data movement and transformations.
Philip Dutton, founder and chief executive of the data lineage software provider, said that the assistant enables teams to move at the speed regulators demand without sacrificing human oversight and accountability.

“Regulators and boards increasingly expect organisations to demonstrate not just what decisions were made, but exactly what data underpinned them, where that data came from, how it was transformed and whether it can be trusted,” said Dutton. “Delivering that level of evidence at the speed modern enterprises require means rethinking how lineage is built and maintained. Approaches that combine AI-driven automation with human validation are emerging as the practical path forward for producing lineage that is fast to generate and defensible under scrutiny.”

The software ingests unstructured documentation, including legacy spreadsheets and images, to generate queryable records and audit trails.

ACA Expands Cross-Asset Transaction Cost Analysis with FXT Acquisition

ACA Group has acquired foreign exchange analytics specialist FX Transparency (FXT), extending its capabilities in transaction cost analysis (TCA) and best-execution monitoring within the FX market.

The move follows ACA’s 2025 acquisition of Global Trading Analytics (GTA), which marked the firm’s initial expansion into TCA across equities, fixed income, derivatives and foreign exchange. With the addition of FXT, ACA deepens its coverage in FX — one of the largest and most liquid global markets, but also one where execution quality can be difficult for institutional investors to assess.

Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts, FXTT has developed a reputation for independent, data-driven analysis of FX execution. Its analytics draw on a substantial repository of institutional trading data to help asset managers, pension funds, endowments, mutual funds, insurance companies and corporations evaluate trading performance and demonstrate fiduciary oversight.

The acquisition strengthens ACA’s broader push to combine governance, risk and compliance (GRC) expertise with trading analytics. As regulatory expectations around best execution continue to tighten across multiple jurisdictions, firms are under increasing pressure to demonstrate how they source liquidity, evaluate counterparties and measure execution quality across asset classes.

In foreign exchange markets, those demands can be particularly complex. Fragmented liquidity, varied execution methodologies and the decentralized market structure mean institutional investors increasingly rely on specialised analytics to evaluate trading outcomes and benchmark counterparty performance.

“The acquisition of FX Transparency represents a deliberate next step in building a best-in-class, cross-asset TCA platform,” said Patrick Olson, CEO of ACA Group. “Following our successful acquisition of GTA, we identified FXT as a complementary platform that brings recognized FX expertise, a strong institutional client base, and differentiated analytics that enhance our ability to support clients’ transaction cost analysis and best execution needs.”

FX Transparency’s leadership sees the deal as a way to extend its analytics capabilities within a broader governance and compliance framework.

“Joining ACA enables us to continue delivering the high-quality foreign exchange analytics our clients expect, now supported by ACA’s global operating resources and broad GRC expertise. Together, we can provide a comprehensive TCA solution that addresses the evolving needs of global institutional investors,” said John Galanek, Co-Founder and CEO of FX Transparency.

As institutional investors face growing scrutiny around trading transparency and fiduciary accountability, cross-asset analytics platforms that combine market data, execution analysis and compliance oversight are becoming core components in the GRC toolkit.

FinScan and Nexus AML Partner to Scale Data-First AML Operations

Financial institutions have long invested heavily in transaction monitoring, sanctions screening, and KYC controls, yet many compliance teams continue to confront a more fundamental obstacle: the quality of the data that feeds those systems. Poorly structured or incomplete customer and transaction data can generate large volumes of alerts and manual investigation work, stretching already pressured financial crime teams.

Against this backdrop, Innovative Systems’ FinScan has entered into a strategic partnership with Nexus AML aimed at addressing the operational bottleneck at the front end of AML programmes: data readiness. The collaboration brings together FinScan’s data cleansing and sanctions-screening technology with Nexus AML’s outsourced financial crime operations, reflecting a growing industry emphasis on “data-first” compliance architectures.

Operational pressure linked to data quality is widely recognised across the sector. In a FinScan poll of 550 compliance professionals, 59% reported that data quality consumes most of their time – highlighting the extent to which AML teams are still managing downstream consequences of upstream data issues.

The partnership is designed to address that imbalance by combining automated data preparation with operational expertise in clearing and managing alerts. Institutions working with Nexus AML will be able to integrate FinScan’s real-time data cleansing and screening technology, which targets sanctions, watchlists and payment flows, with the aim of reducing unnecessary alerts and improving the accuracy of screening results. In parallel, organisations using FinScan’s technology will be able to access Nexus AML’s operational support services to help manage investigation workloads and maintain compliance processes during periods of heightened activity.

Deborah Overdeput, Chief Operating Officer at Innovative Systems, framed the collaboration around the operational foundations of AML programmes. “FinScan and Nexus AML share the belief that financial crime compliance must be both operationally scalable and strategically grounded in high-quality, compliance-ready data,” she said. “Our partnership brings together two complementary strengths: operational excellence in clearing and investigating alerts, and a data-first screening approach that reduces those alerts in the first place. Together, we’re helping institutions build AML programs that are more efficient, defensible, and sustainable.”

Teciem Welcomes Didier Bouillard as Chairman of Board of Directors

Teciem has appointed Didier Bouillard as independent chairman of its board, adding a senior capital-markets technology executive whose career spans some of the industry’s most significant trading, risk and regulatory infrastructure platforms. The move signals the firm’s focus on strengthening governance as it continues to scale its treasury and capital-markets software platform under private-equity ownership.

Bouillard brings more than three decades of experience building and leading enterprise financial-technology businesses. Based in London, he will work with Teciem’s board, management team and shareholder representatives to support strategic direction and governance oversight as the company pursues its next phase of growth.

His career includes senior roles at Ubitrade and SunGard, where he helped develop and expand trading, risk and post-trade platforms used widely across the industry. He later served as chief executive of Ullink, leading the firm’s global expansion before becoming CEO of Calypso Technology in 2018. In 2021 he took on leadership of Adenza following the merger of Calypso Technology and AxiomSL, overseeing the integration of trading, treasury, risk and regulatory-compliance capabilities before the company was acquired by Nasdaq.

Throughout these roles, Bouillard has worked at the intersection of market infrastructure, enterprise software and private-equity ownership models—experience that Teciem’s leadership believes will be relevant as the firm continues to expand its front-to-back treasury and capital-markets offering.

Commenting on the appointment, Wissam Khoury, Chief Executive Officer and Board Director at Teciem, said: “Welcoming an independent chairman of Didier’s caliber and experience to our Board of Directors marks an important milestone in Teciem’s evolution as a standalone, private-equity backed provider of treasury and capital markets technology. The appointment reflects our commitment to balanced oversight and governance standards consistent with leading institutional fintech platforms. Didier’s expertise in scaling fintech businesses in partnership with private equity, combined with his independent perspective, will be instrumental as we grow the business and execute our strategic roadmap.”