A-Team Insight Brief
Broadridge Moves Asset Servicing Solution into AWS Cloud
Broadridge Financial Solutions has made its global asset servicing solution available on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. A global Tier 1 investment bank is in live operation with the solution and another is onboarding. The company’s end-to-end solution is designed to address industry, business and operational challenges in global asset servicing by streamlining corporate actions, dividend and coupon processing across multiple asset classes, business lines and regions. Operating the solution on AWS can add increased operational agility, improved and faster client onboarding, quicker deployments, and enhanced security, scale, and resilience.
EBS Readies Next-generation EBS Direct Platform
EBS, a provider of electronic trading platforms and technology services in foreign exchange markets, and part of CME Group, has launched a next-generation EBS Direct platform with enhanced capacity and speed that will deliver round trip processing times below 50 microseconds. The platform is in beta-testing and is designed to offer faster market data and provide greater certainty of execution and improved fill ratios. EBS will transition clients to the platform in four phases over 18 months. The rollout is expected to be completed by the first half of 2021, after which time current EBS Direct architecture will be decommissioned.
FCA Finds MiFID II Research Unbundling Rules Working Well for Investors
Multi-firm review findings published this week by the FCA has found that, post-MiFID II, most asset managers have chosen to pay for research from their own revenues, instead of using their clients’ funds. Firms have also improved their accountability and scrutiny of both research and execution costs, including where firms have chosen to charge research costs to clients. This has resulted in investors in UK-managed equity portfolios saving around £70 million in the first six months of 2018 across a sample of firms. The review also indicated that research budgets have fallen by 20-30%.
Firms Still Uncertain About Libor Transition
Although four out of five financial providers have Libor transition plans in place, just 18% say their plan is mature, while only one in five say they are operationally ready for the change – according to the Accenture 2019 Libor Survey. Almost half (41%) do not feel they have a unified and consistent approach to transition and remediation, while two in five believe that regulatory uncertainty and lack of clarity are hampering execution of their remediation efforts.
RegTech Spending to reach $127bn by 2024, Says Juniper
New data from Juniper Research forecasts that the value of RegTech spending will exceed $127 billion by 2024, up from $25 billion in 2019. This growth will be driven by a dramatic rise in the automation of resource-intensive tasks, such as those involved in KYC (Know Your Customer) checks and increasing use of AI in transaction monitoring. Global regulatory compliance costs are also set to soar, from just under $278 billion to more than $316 billion over the next five years. In Europe, this growth is likely to be driven by regulatory divergence post-Brexit which, while disruptive, could create new opportunities for RegTech.
Refinitiv Research Shows Cloud Investment Escalating
Cloud projects are delivering immediate cost reduction, faster innovation and sometimes better than expected results, leading financial institutions to allocate almost half (48%) of their IT budget to public cloud services in 2020, up from 41% this year, according to results of recent Refinitiv research into the use of cloud technology for financial data. The key challenge is managing data privacy controls across multiple datasets in different location, while some firms are limiting use of the cloud because of regulatory concerns. The Refinitiv research is based on telephone interviews with 300 executives at buy-side and sell-side firms.
QuantHouse Adds SpiderRock Data and Analytics to API Ecosystem
QuantHouse has added SpiderRock Gateway Technologies’ proprietary data and analytics service including implied volatility and option prints to the 150+ data sources available through QuantHouse API. SpiderRock provides option analytics as a service delivered in a normalised binary format. As part of the offering, the company delivers implied volatility, greeks, risk slides, and volatility surfaces across US-listed equity and futures derivatives in a real-time feed that allows institutional clients to develop and enhance trading and risk management systems.
SMBC Nikko Replaces Bloomberg SSEOMS with Itiviti OMS Platform
Following Bloomberg’s decision in June 2019 to withdraw its Sell-Side Execution and Order Management Solutions (SSEOMS) and Itiviti’s offer to help SSEOMS users migrate to its OMS, SMBC Nikko London Capital Markets has successfully replaced the Bloomberg platform with Itiviti’s multi-asset OMS for high touch trading in London and added Itiviti’s middle office solutions including UL Middle, UL Books and UK Publisher. SMBC Nikko already included Itiviti in its technology stack and says the latest additions will support its cash equities desks in London, sales trading across Europe and the US, and execution services in Asia.
SS&C Adds S3 Transaction Cost Analysis and SEC Rule 606 Regulatory Reporting Services
SS&C Technologies is adding S3’s total cost analysis (TCA) and SEC Rule 606 reporting products to its solutions line up. The addition of S3 services – S3 is a provider of trade surveillance, analytics and regulatory reporting technology – will help SS&C clients ensure best execution of trading transactions through trade surveillance, analytics and full transparency, in line with compliance and regulatory requirements. It will also support production of detailed Rule 606 reports in compliance with SEC mandates.
Luxoft Forms Strategic Alliance with Fenergo
Luxoft, a DXC Technology company, has become a Global Platinum Member of client lifecycle management (CLM) specialist Fenergo’s partner ecosystem. Luxoft will offer Fenergo’s client community members professional consulting services to enable the rapid systems integration and deployment of Fenergo’s platform and suite of digital capabilities. The Fenergo ecosystem currently consists of 300 global organisations, of which just three are platinum members.