DataGuard Secures $20 Million in Funding

Munich-based DataGuard, which provides GDPR-as-a-service, has successfully closed a $20 million Series A investment round led by One Peak Partners. The firm intends to use the funds raised to expand its business operations across Europe and North and South America, as well as to implement enhancements to its existing platform. Since its launch in 2017, the data privacy specialist has onboarded over 1,000 clients.

Railsbank Secures Visa Investment

UK-based API-based RegTech platform Railsbank, which helps developers and product managers to build, launch and scale financial services businesses, has raised additional funding from Visa and Japanese venture capital firm Global Brain, as well as signing a five-year partnership with Visa to expand in Southeast Asia. The firm, which also provides operations and compliance services to banks, recently opened a new Singapore office following a successful capital-raising round of $10 million last year.

DRW Adopts OpenGamma’s Analytics

DRW, a major global principal trading firm, will use OpenGamma’s analytics in its treasury function to manage derivatives margin. DRW chose the software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution as it seeks to expand its treasury capabilities in response to regulations such as Uncleared Margin Rules (UMR). The regulations require any trading strategy that uses leverage to optimize and be efficient with its use of collateral. OpenGamma’s solution will enable DRW to improve treasury processes by regularly evaluating alternative ways to put on new trades across both clearing houses and bilateral counterparties.

New Zealand Regulator Goes Digital

The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) New Zealand has confirmed that it will engage with regulated firms and market participants exclusively via remote technology for the foreseeable future. “Our offices remain open and we encourage people to contact us with concerns or questions, as well as any suggestions on how we can assist you,” said the regulator in a statement.

Google Anthos Service Partner Status for GFT

GFT, a global IT services and software engineering provider, has been designated as a global Google Anthos Service Partner. Google Anthos is an open source, hybrid modernisation platform, based on Kubernetes and providing a ‘single pane of glass’ enabling clients to manage and monitor an entire hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure. It enables users to easily move applications and microservices around their technology estate and across multi-cloud environments with no hardware lock-in. To date, Google has partnered with a limited selection of third parties to drive the platform forward, of which GFT becomes the latest.

Compliance.ai Launches Insurance RegTech Solution in Response to COVID-19

Compliance.ai has announced comprehensive coverage for insurance-related regulatory content on its platform, which automates the complex steps within the regulatory compliance process for banks, financial services and insurance companies. The move comes in response to a rapid influx of new claims and actions in the US as a result of COVID-19, especially in the US, where insurance companies are struggling to keep track of the number and complexity of regulatory changes they must comply with. “We’ve found many regulatory changes addressing banking, financial services and Insurance are related, and our clients have requested coverage across that spectrum,” says Kayvan Alikhani, CEO and co-founder.

ICE Futures Waives Voice Recording, Time-stamping Requirements

ICE Futures US has granted temporary relief to intermediaries from the obligation to comply with certain requirements, including from the requirement to make and keep records of oral communications, as long as a written record is provided instead. The exchange has also granted relief from any requirement to record the date and time by time-stamp or other timing device, provided that a record of the date and time is kept to the nearest minute, for example by instant message or email. Previously, the exchange confirmed that floor brokers and impacted intermediaries would be allowed to work from different locations.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has supported these measures, issuing its own no-action letters confirming relief from both oral communications recording and time-stamping for brokers, swap dealers, forex dealers, and members of designated contract markets and swap execution facilities.

Neoxam Expands into Poland With Skarbiec TFI

Polish asset manager Skarbiec TFI has chosen NeoXam’s Density portfolio management solution for its 42 funds and sub-funds. Density will be the backbone solution for the entire asset management group, covering all calculations for the funds, as well as pre and post-trade compliance. Where previously the group had used excel to monitor its funds portfolios, Density will allow them to have an overview of the current and historic performance of the funds, increasing efficiency and allowing them to manage their funds more effectively. Skarbiec TFI marks NeoXam’s first client win in Poland, as part of its planned expansion into Central and Eastern Europe following the hire of Philipp Sfeir, an ex-head Head of Data at a top-four Swiss bank. Poland is the second largest hub for asset management in Eastern Europe.

LexisNexis Closes Emailage Acquisition

LexisNexis Risk Solutions has acquired Arizona-based Emailage, a fraud prevention and risk management solutions provider that provides fraud risk scoring solutions based on email intelligence. Its fraud prevention solutions assess fraud risks by utilizing email address metadata, a differentiated global contributory network, and machine learning algorithms. Emailage, which has established market presence in the US, Latin America, Europe and Asia Pacific, will form part of the Business Services Group of LexisNexis. The two firms already have an established commercial partnership offering email risk assessment to global clients.

CFTC Issues COVID-19 Relief

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has relaxed rules around voice and telephone recording for swap execution facilities up until the end of June, along with relief to designated contract markets regarding audit trail and related requirements over the same period. The spread of coronavirus has caused compliance with certain CFTC requirements to be particularly challenging or impossible because of displacement of personnel from normal business sites due to social distancing and other measures.

“These prudent, targeted, and temporary actions will help facilitate orderly trading and liquidity in our derivatives markets,” said CFTC Chairman Heath P. Tarbert.