Integral and StoneX Expand Partnership to Boost APAC Trading Infrastructure

Integral, the currency technology provider, has extended its long-term partnership with global financial services firm StoneX Group Inc. The collaboration establishes connectivity at the Equinix SG1 data facility in Singapore, a move designed to strengthen StoneX’s capabilities and client service across the Asia-Pacific region.

The localised deployment will allow StoneX to lower latency and enhance trading efficiency for its clients. By utilising Integral’s expanded presence at the SG1 hub, StoneX can directly access liquidity in foreign exchange and precious metals, eliminating the cross-region lag associated with its existing setups in New York and London.

This infrastructure expansion aligns with Singapore’s position as a major global financial hub experiencing a rise in regional trading volumes. To accommodate this growing demand, Integral has recently tripled its capacity at the SG1 facility, where it now processes more than one million tickets every day.

Waypoint Trading Solutions Expands European Footprint with Launch in Equinix MD6 Data Centre

Waypoint Trading Solutions, a TNS business, is expanding its European exchange connectivity services by launching managed hosting and ultra-low latency Layer 1 connectivity at the Equinix MD6 data centre in Madrid. This expansion prepares for Bolsas y Mercados Españoles (BME) migrating its matching engines from Las Rozas to MD6 in the second quarter of 2027. The move places trading firms closer to the core Spanish trading platform, reducing network latency.

The new deployment enables market data vendors and exchange members to access Spanish equities and derivatives markets for market data and order entry. Waypoint will also offer Layer 3 services within the facility. This project builds on the company’s existing European colocation services, which include access to major exchanges such as the London Stock Exchange, Euronext, Deutsche Boerse, and SIX Swiss Exchange.

By establishing a presence in MD6, Waypoint provides clients with direct access to a financial hub featuring over 85,000 equities, fixed income, and derivative instruments. As a registered data vendor and application service provider, the firm offers a managed alternative to in-house infrastructure, allowing trading firms to optimize internal resources.

Shield adds Microsoft 365 Copilot & OCR to RegTech Surveillance Stack

Shield has expanded its communications surveillance platform to cover Microsoft 365 Copilot interactions and image-based content, addressing two areas where financial firms’ working practices have been moving faster than their compliance controls.

The update adds a native Microsoft 365 Copilot connector and OCR text extraction for image attachments. Together, the capabilities bring employee prompts, AI-generated responses, screenshots, scanned documents and photos into the same surveillance, archive, search, case management and export workflows already used for other communications channels.

The development reflects a wider compliance challenge for financial institutions. AI-assisted tools are becoming embedded in daily workflows, while image-based communication has become a routine way of sharing information. In many firms, however, those records have not been captured, indexed or made available for compliance review in the same way as email, chat or other monitored channels.

Shield says its Copilot connector captures employee prompts and AI responses and processes them through the platform’s existing compliance workflow in under 24 hours. Metadata is preserved for audit and investigation, allowing firms to search, review and export Copilot interactions without introducing a separate compliance tool or review process.

The OCR capability applies the same principle to image-based content. Text contained in screenshots, scanned documents and photos is extracted, indexed and analysed. Triggered terms are highlighted inline below the relevant image, making the material searchable for investigation and e-discovery and reducing reliance on manual inspection.

The release comes as firms face growing pressure to extend surveillance across a broader set of communication formats. Shield cites the 1LoD 2026 Surveillance Benchmarking Report, which found that 67 percent of banks regard surveillance across multiple communication channels as a major challenge, while 22 percent now monitor more than 30 channels, compared with 14 percent two years earlier.

Regulatory expectations are also pushing firms towards broader coverage. FINRA Rule 4511 requires member firms to make and preserve required books and records, while FINRA’s 2026 Oversight Report highlights generative AI as an emerging supervisory and compliance issue. In the UK and EU, firms also need to consider how AI-assisted and image-based communications interact with market abuse, supervision and recordkeeping expectations. The FCA has warned that firms with unmonitored risks and no strategic plan to address them are ‘a long way from meeting our expectations.’

“Comprehensive surveillance has always meant capturing everything material to business conduct. But what counts as material is changing — AI-assisted conversations and image-based content are now part of daily workflows at every major financial institution,” said Tamar Sharir Beiser, Chief Product Officer at Shield. “Shield’s role is to ensure that as communication evolves, the compliance infrastructure around it evolves too, so firms are never in a position where their governance framework is trailing their technology adoption.”

For financial firms, the issue is no longer whether AI-assisted conversations and image-based content may fall within the compliance perimeter. The operational challenge is whether those records can be captured, searched, supervised and evidenced without disrupting the tools employees already use.

TS Imagine Expands TradeSmart Fixed Income EMS to Support Comprehensive Loans Trading

TS Imagine has expanded the product coverage within its TradeSmart Fixed Income Execution Management System (EMS) to include comprehensive support for loans trading. This update allows users to trade leveraged loans, syndicated loans, and distressed debt through the platform. The addition addresses a growing demand from trading desks for more scalable, automated, and integrated workflows across their fixed income operations.

This expansion builds upon TradeSmart’s existing fixed income capabilities, which already encompass investment-grade, high-yield, municipal, mortgage, and government bonds. The platform also supports asset-backed securities, credit default swaps, interest rate swaps, listed securities, and cryptocurrency, enabling users to manage a diverse multi-asset portfolio through a single interface.

The new feature follows significant growth in fixed income automation for the company. Driven by the recent launch of its event-driven Automation 2.0 platform, TS Imagine reported a 200% year-over-year increase in automated fixed income execution volumes in Q1 2026, alongside a 44% year-on-year rise in overall fixed income trading.

BestEx Research Group Launches End-to-End Algorithmic Trading Platform for Banks and Brokers

BestEx Research Group LLC, the independent provider of algorithmic execution and trading analytics, has launched AMS One, an end-to-end algorithmic trading platform allowing banks and brokers to build and operate their own execution businesses across global equities and futures markets.

The platform integrates four key components required to run a competitive algorithmic execution enterprise, according to the company. It features high-performance execution algorithms alongside tools that allow firms to build branded algorithms tailored to specific client objectives. Additionally, it includes an integrated transaction cost analytics module to support execution consulting, offering a consistent user experience across different asset classes and global jurisdictions.

From launch, AMS One provides comprehensive market access across global equities and futures contracts on 21 global exchanges. Its equities coverage spans the US, Canada, 15 European markets, and four markets in the Asia-Pacific region.

Clearstream Unveils Next-Generation Hybrid Digital Securities Infrastructure

Clearstream, the post-trade business of Deutsche Börse Group, has announced a next-generation digital securities infrastructure designed to integrate traditional and tokenised asset markets. The hybrid platform will enable market participants to combine traditional securities, digital assets, and various cash forms within a single portfolio. Operating across Europe and connecting 60 global markets, the initiative aims to support the EU’s Savings & Investments Union by streamlining international investment flows.

Launching in phases throughout 2026 and 2027, the infrastructure remains subject to regulatory approval. Once live, it will span the full securities lifecycle—including issuance, settlement, custody, and financing—for all assets regulated under the EU’s MiFID and MiCA frameworks. The platform will grant institutional access to blockchain technology, stablecoins, and security tokens regardless of the underlying technology or asset type.

Developed alongside market partners, the platform builds on Clearstream’s existing financial infrastructure, which holds EUR 22 trillion in assets under custody. The collaboration focuses on practical market applications, such as large-scale asset tokenisation, direct blockchain settlement, and the reuse of digital assets as collateral across multiple transactions.

Investor Pointe Launches Unified Technology and Services Platform for Private Markets

Investor Pointe has launched as a technology and services company designed to unify operations for private markets firms. Led by newly appointed Chief Executive Officer Scott Hofmann, the company combines an AI-enabled platform, a specialist services team, and tailored solutions to support firms across the entire investor lifecycle. This ranges from fund design and fundraising to investor servicing, reporting, and data optimisation.

The launch addresses growing operational complexity and investor demands for transparency and digital-first experiences. By combining the decade-long operational expertise of industry players Bite Investments and Untap, Investor Pointe replaces disconnected legacy systems with a single, unified operating model.

The company’s portfolio features seven tailored solutions covering areas such as fund design, digital onboarding, distribution enablement, and agentic data optimisation. These solutions can be fully managed by Investor Pointe, run internally by client teams, or delivered via a hybrid approach to match the client’s scale and operational needs.

OpenYield Secures $6 Million Series A Funding and Partners with LeveL Markets

Bond marketplace OpenYield has closed a Series A funding round of over $6 million, led by LeveL Markets with participation from Draper Associates, Canapi Ventures, and Clocktower Ventures. Launched in 2024 as an alternative trading system (ATS), OpenYield provides an automated, equity-like trading experience for fixed income. To date, the platform has executed nearly $2 billion in volume across corporate, municipal, and US Treasury bonds, serving more than 60 institutional clients representing over $5 trillion in assets under management.

Alongside the investment, a strategic commercial partnership will see LeveL Markets integrate OpenYield into its equities platform. This integration grants LeveL’s institutional clients direct access to OpenYield’s bond liquidity through existing equity trading infrastructure, requiring no new development. For LeveL, which is backed by major institutions including Nasdaq and BlackRock, this marks its first strategic investment as it expands its equity-market connectivity into new asset classes.

OpenYield will use the capital to expand its marketplace by adding buy-side and sell-side firms, deepen institutional order system integrations, and grow its trading data products. The funds will also support the development of agentic trading workflows and advance tokenised bond trading. The expansion aims to capitalise on the fixed-income market’s ongoing shift toward automation, particularly within municipal bonds and separately managed accounts requiring efficient, low-cost execution.

STP Investment Services Named Premier Partner for Lightspeed TDMS Fund Services

STP Investment Services (STP) has been officially designated as the Premier Partner for Fund Services by Lightspeed Data Solutions. This formalises a commercial relationship that began in 2019, positioning STP as the preferred operational partner for investment firms using the Lightspeed Trade Data Management System (TDMS) platform. The two firms already share 18 investment managers and fund services clients under this combined operating model.

The partnership integrates Lightspeed’s post-trade automation technology with STP’s operational teams, allowing investment firms to outsource trade settlement, reconciliation, and middle- and back-office operations without building internal infrastructure. Clients can choose from flexible engagement models, including standalone trade settlements, full outsourcing, or a managed service model where STP operates directly within the client’s own TDMS environment.

This expanded collaboration addresses a rapidly tightening global settlement landscape, following the US transition to T+1 in 2024 and ahead of the UK and EU transitions scheduled for October 2027. To mitigate the increased operational risks and costs of settlement failures under these tighter timelines, the platform features SmartSettle AI. This predictive analytics module identifies potential trade failures before they occur, preparing clients for future shifts toward T+0 settlement cycles.

Xceptor Launches AI-Driven Features to Streamline Reconciliation Configuration

Xceptor, the data automation specialist for capital markets, has introduced two new features, AI Reconciliation Rule Builder and Live Tester, to simplify the creation and validation of reconciliation logic. Initially accessible through the Xceptor Reconciliations SaaS platform, these tools use artificial intelligence alongside proprietary evaluation logic to automatically suggest matching and comparison rules from sample data.

The launch addresses a growing challenge for financial institutions, where rising data volumes and shorter settlement cycles require fast control deployment without expanding headcount. Traditionally, configuring and deploying new controls has created an operational bottleneck. This update allows non-technical operations teams to generate and test rules quickly within a controlled environment, identifying potential issues before deployment.

By streamlining this process, the functionality reduces the technical expertise required and accelerates the time between uploading a source file and establishing a working configuration. Internal testing by Xceptor indicates that the AI Reconciliation Rule Builder can reduce rule validation times by over 50%. The workflow keeps human operators in control of reviewing AI outputs, aiming to improve operational efficiency while maintaining strict governance standards.