Rimes Adds Analytics, Order Book Functionality with Partnerships

Rimes has forged partnerships with PANTA, BMLL and Ortec Finance, integrating specialised analytics and historical order book data into the enterprise data management provider’s platform.

The collaboration aims to provide clients with index blending capabilities, market-microstructure analysis and performance attribution.

Vijay Mayadas said the company is providing deeper analytics and interoperable data to help clients understand drivers of risk and return.

The partnerships establish two-way data connectivity and access to tick-level datasets to support consolidated portfolio views. Enterprise data management solutions are used by institutional investors to process information and support investment decisions.

Symphony Accelerates AI Integration and Announces Leadership Changes

Symphony is advancing its secure AI and workflow capabilities following a year of significant growth. The company, serving over 1,400 clients, has introduced the AI Agent Studio, a framework designed to let institutions create and deploy AI agents for internal and external workflows. This new tool leverages Symphony’s verified directory and compliance infrastructure, allowing firms to automate complex tasks while maintaining strict data control.

Alongside these product developments, Symphony announced a leadership transition. Ben Chrnelich, formerly co-CEO, has been appointed Chief Executive Officer and President. Brad Levy will move to an external advisory role for the board. The company also highlighted the integration of its AI studio with the Confidential Cloud platform, launched in 2025, which offers cloud scalability with on-premise security levels. Additionally, Symphony is launching WhatsApp Voice with secure recording and archiving, enhancing Microsoft Teams connectivity, and expanding its trader voice analytics to extract insights from high-quality call data.

Synechron Launches Agentic AI Portfolio for Regulated Financial Sectors

Synechron has launched Synechron Agentic, a portfolio of production-ready AI agents tailored for complex and regulated workflows. The initiative aims to help enterprises accelerate their operations while mitigating risk, ensuring that automated processes deliver accurate and consistent results with complete transparency.

The initial release focuses specifically on banking, financial services, wealth management, payments, and insurance. Designed for immediate deployment within real business processes, the agents are fully governed to meet industry standards. They also integrate with established enterprise platforms, including ServiceNow, Salesforce, Appian, and Datadog, enabling organisations to incorporate AI into current systems without operational disruption.

Capital.com Selects Duco to Automate Client and Payment Reconciliations

Capital.com, the global fintech group and online trading platform, has selected Duco to transform its critical client and payment reconciliation processes. By deploying Duco’s AI-powered operational data automation platform, Capital.com intends to manage the increasing volume and complexity of its data inputs more effectively. This strategic move is designed to provide a flexible and modern infrastructure capable of handling the demands of a growing financial institution.

The implementation of Duco’s technology aims to provide a scalable, future-proof solution that strengthens the company’s control environment. Key objectives include increasing operational efficiency and significantly reducing operational risk. Furthermore, this robust foundation is expected to support Capital.com’s sustainable expansion into new markets across multiple jurisdictions, ensuring the firm is well-equipped to handle complex data requirements inherent in global trading.

Cosegic Acquires FINTRAIL

Cosegic has acquired FINTRAIL, a specialist financial crime consultancy, adding depth to its financial crime and regulatory risk capabilities.

FINTRAIL advises firms on financial crime risk management, regulatory compliance, and controls design across banking, payments, fintech, and digital assets. Its entire team will join Cosegic, expanding the scale of specialist expertise available to clients across multiple jurisdictions.

Ben Cook, Group CEO of Cosegic, said the acquisition strengthens an already established financial crime capability and reflects continued investment in specialist expertise as regulatory expectations increase. “FINTRAIL has an exceptional specialist team and bringing them into Cosegic strengthens an already strong financial crime capability. This move makes sense for our clients, gives us an additional edge, and reinforces our commitment to investing in specialist expertise as regulatory expectations continue to rise. This acquisition of FINTRAIL is an exciting step for Cosegic.”

Robert Evans, CEO and co-founder of FINTRAIL, said joining Cosegic allows the firm to extend its original mission at greater scale. “We are joining Cosegic at an exciting time for both businesses. FINTRAIL was founded to provide practical, high-quality financial crime support to firms facing real regulatory challenges, and becoming part of Cosegic allows us to build on that mission at a greater scale. We are delighted to join an established compliance company that shares our focus on integrity and delivering outcomes that matter to clients.”

Nancy King, Senior Managing Director and Head of Corporate Development at Cosegic, said the acquisition aligns with the group’s focus on building targeted specialist capability in areas of growing regulatory scrutiny. “This acquisition aligns closely with our strategy of building targeted, specialist capability in areas of increasing regulatory focus.”

Henry Alty, Investment Director at MML Capital Partners, noted that the transaction marks Cosegic’s second acquisition in two months, as part of a broader buy-and-build strategy focused on specialist compliance capabilities across key international markets.

FCA Extends UK Equity Consolidated Tape Consultation

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has extended the deadline for its consultation on the proposed framework for the UK Equity Consolidated Tape. The consultation period for CP25/31 will now close on 13 February 2026, providing market participants with additional time to respond.

CP25/31 sets out the regulatory architecture for a UK equity consolidated tape, including data-contribution obligations for trading venues and Approved Publication Arrangements (APAs), alongside the governance, operational and commercial expectations for a future Consolidated Tape Provider (CTP).

At the heart of the FCA’s plan is a centralised, standardised view of UK equity market activity. The tape would aggregate post-trade data and selected pre-trade information – most notably an attributed best bid and offer – across lit venues and OTC trading. The objective is to address long-standing fragmentation in UK equity data, where firms currently rely on multiple proprietary feeds with inconsistent formats, latency profiles and licensing terms.

The consultation extension is also notable for what it signals about the next phase of the project. Potential CTP candidates may use the additional time to refine expressions of interest, stress-test technical architectures and clarify commercial models. Market participants, meanwhile, are being asked to provide concrete evidence on implementation costs, governance safeguards and how the tape could be consumed operationally rather than remaining a purely analytical tool.

While the FCA has indicated that a policy statement will follow once responses are assessed, the timetable points toward a target go-live in 2027. That places the UK on a trajectory that broadly parallels, but does not replicate, the EU’s own consolidated tape ambitions.

For now, the extended deadline creates a wider window for engagement. Whether the consolidated tape ultimately delivers simpler access and lower costs will hinge less on the concept itself and more on the details now being debated: data scope, pricing discipline and the operational realities of integrating a single market view into day-to-day trading and compliance workflows.

AQX Technologies Launches SWIFT Connector for Post-Trade Automation

AQX Technologies has announced the launch of its new SWIFT Connector, designed to streamline post-trade messaging for buy-side and sell-side firms. This addition to the AQX platform provides native support for SWIFT messaging, enabling clients to send and receive trade confirmations and data securely. The integration facilitates straight-through processing (STP) from trade capture to settlement, replacing legacy manual workflows such as emails and CSV-based processes.

By orchestrating confirmations, status updates, and exceptions within a single system, the connector helps firms reduce operational risk and improve confirmation times. It also strengthens audit trails to meet evolving regulatory requirements. This release builds on AQX’s recent growth and supports the wider industry trend of modernising middle- and back-office operations for greater speed and accuracy.

TNS Expands APAC Footprint with Connectivity to Japan Alternative Market

Transaction Network Services (TNS) has expanded its infrastructure in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region by establishing connectivity to the Japan Alternative Market (JAX). This integration provides customers with direct, managed access to market data feeds from JAX, which began operations in December 2024 as a new trading venue for Japanese equities. Global firms can now incorporate this data into their trading and analytics workflows through TNS’s extensive global network.

This new connection addresses the complexity of accessing Asian exchanges, which often require bespoke broker arrangements. TNS simplifies this by enabling clients to view JAX market data alongside other major exchanges via a low-latency managed network and an extranet of over 5,000 endpoints. The addition of JAX reinforces TNS’s presence in the region, joining an existing Japanese exchange portfolio that includes Japannext, the Tokyo Financial Exchange (TFX), and the Japan Exchange Group (JPX).

Simplifying AML for Mutuals: Napier AI and Mutual Vision’s Sector-Focused Approach

Napier AI and Mutual Vision have partnered to address a long-standing gap in financial crime compliance technology for building societies and credit unions, launching a sector-specific platform designed around the operational realities of mutual companies in the UK and Canada.

The result, MV Shield – Powered by Napier AI, is positioned as a compliance-as-a-service platform that combines Mutual Vision’s experience supporting mutual organisations with Napier AI’s financial crime technology. Rather than adapting generic AML systems, MV Shield has been configured specifically for smaller institutions that often operate with lean compliance teams and legacy or manual processes.

For many building societies and credit unions, fragmented tooling and limited in-house technical capacity have made it difficult to keep pace with rising regulatory expectations. The partnership aims to simplify that challenge by providing pre-configured controls, reporting, and risk models that reflect the behaviours and risk profiles typical of the mutual sector.

Unlike broad, one-size-fits-all AML platforms, MV Shield is built around the operational patterns of mutuals. It brings together customer screening and transaction monitoring within a managed service model, allowing institutions to deploy established compliance workflows from the outset without undertaking complex internal development. The platform also incorporates AI models tailored to mutual-sector risk exposure, alongside more than one hundred pre-configured typologies developed through Napier AI’s work with the Financial Conduct Authority.

Taken together, this approach is intended to allow smaller compliance teams to deliver outcomes more commonly associated with much larger operations. Faster onboarding reduced false positives, and the ability to scale compliance activity without proportionate increases in headcount are positioned as practical benefits of the model.

Greg Watson, CEO of Napier AI, said: “MV Shield makes compliance-first AI accessible to institutions that have traditionally been underserved by the technology market. Mutual Vision’s deep roots in the building society sector, combined with Napier AI’s proven platform and regulatory expertise, create a powerful proposition that strengthens operational resilience and reduces the burden of compliance.”

From Mutual Vision’s perspective, the emphasis is on alignment with the day-to-day regulatory pressures facing smaller firms. Tim Bowen, CEO of Mutual Vision, commented: “Our customers and other small and mid-sized firms need screening and AML technology that is modern, explainable, easy to implement and aligned to the regulatory challenges they face every day. By powering MV Shield with Napier AI, we’re giving these firms the opportunity to adopt a Tier one grade solution that is a simple and affordable way to raise their compliance maturity.”

He added that the platform is designed to avoid the disruption typically associated with large-scale transformation projects: “This is also a solution that does not have the disruption or cost normally associated with major transformation projects. MV Shield is a sector-informed, preconfigured AML platform, not a generic tool, and it is designed around the unique processes and risk patterns of our customers.”

Cerberus Selects Behavox for AI-Native Comms Surveillance

Cerberus Capital Management has selected Behavox to support its communications surveillance programme, adding AI-driven monitoring across voice, chat and email as part of a broader compliance controls strategy.

The deployment centres on Behavox Quantum, an AI-native surveillance capability designed to operate across multiple communication channels and languages. Within Cerberus, it will sit alongside other elements of Behavox’s Unified Controls Framework, which brings together communications surveillance, trade surveillance, archiving and policy management into a single operating model. The emphasis is on improving the quality of alerts while reducing the operational burden associated with large volumes of false positives.

From Cerberus’ perspective, the evaluation focused on whether the technology could meet demanding internal standards around explainability, scalability and day-to-day effectiveness. As Andrew Kandel, Cerberus Chief Compliance Officer, noted: “We have seen the success Behavox has had over the past few years with explainable AI for compliance and driving operational efficiency for compliance teams by reducing false positives and identifying meaningful items for teams to review.” He added: “In evaluating the market, we were comfortable with Behavox’s approach and long-term roadmap at an affordable rate.”

Behavox points to this as part of a broader trend among large investment firms that are moving beyond basic surveillance coverage towards more transparent and defensible controls. Nabeel Ebrahim, Chief Revenue Officer at Behavox, said: “Cerberus’ emphasis on fundamentals of having effective, explainable and scalable detective controls was a key driver in their decision.” He added that Cerberus undertook a detailed assessment of the underlying AI to ensure it aligned with its compliance expectations.

In addition to technology, Cerberus is also making use of Behavox’s Alert Review Managed Services as an extension of its compliance function. The service combines Behavox’s AI with experienced reviewers to provide consistent alert handling, governance and oversight, with the aim of allowing in-house teams to focus on higher-value supervisory and strategic work rather than alert throughput.

Michael Talbert, Head of Professional Services at Behavox, framed the managed service element as an operational assurance layer rather than a pure outsourcing play: “Managed Services is about confidence and consistency. Cerberus wanted assurance that its surveillance program operates to a high standard every day, not just strong technology, but strong execution.”

Behavox also highlights that its large language models have been in live production for more than three years and have already been through internal audit reviews, regulatory examinations and model validation exercises. For firms such as Cerberus, this operational track record appears to be as important as the underlying AI capability, particularly as regulators continue to scrutinise how advanced analytics are embedded into surveillance and compliance frameworks.

Founded in 1992, Cerberus is a global alternative investment firm with approximately $70 billion in assets across credit, real estate and private equity strategies, investing across the capital structure with a focus on long-term value creation.